


Dean Discovers Days

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10x05, Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Season/Series 10, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Bunker Fic, Case Fic, Chess Metaphors, Codenames, Copious Amounts of Breakfast, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic Dean Winchester, Episode: s10e05 Coda, Fandom Fandom, Fantasizing, Gender Ambiguity, Honesty, Humor, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Mark of Cain, Mary Winchester's A+ Parenting, Masturbation, Men of Letters Bunker, Mentions of Past Dean Winchester/OFC, Meta, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Episode: s10e05 Fan Fiction, Sam Ships It, Sam's Bitchface, Sastiel Overtones, Secret Society, Sick Sam Winchester, Slow Burn, Subtext, The Winchester Literary Feelings Roundtable, Touch-Starved, Vomiting, Wincest Overtones, Wincestiel Overtones, mentions of past underage, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-22 14:18:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3732022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the days following the opening night of <i>Supernatural: The Musical</i>, Cas finds Dean, Dean finds himself, and Sam...  Well, Sam finds fanfiction.  No case can ever be straight-forward with Team Free Will involved, however, so as Dean and Cas finally make their way across the board toward each other, Sam yearns to unravel the sinister thread that is plotting their lives.</p><p>"To those behind the curtain, please, no attention pay.<br/>You cannot know who pulls the strings or how they get their way.<br/>For there's a Game of Fic afoot, and canon's on the line.<br/>One can either ship to live or, by writing, die."</p><p>...But when has a Winchester ever left well-enough alone?</p><p>ETA 05-23-16: Still updating! I am slow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to the witty and wonderful [betty days](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/) for being my beta, my co-conspirator, and my best friend. <3
> 
> Tags will be added to as necessary.
> 
> This will update on Sundays. There's not a set time in between chapters, but if it's Sunday, check in and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
> 
> (And yes, I'm still working on [Writers' Strike](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2325350), but I do hope you will enjoy this ~~diversionary tactic~~ fanfic until chapter three is complete.)
> 
> Please do not repost/copy/duplicate this work to other sites. That's called theft.

The monster's cracked, scorched hide gives way with a crunch beneath the scrape of a relentless blade. It puts up little struggle, realizing its end is nigh, and succumbs to the trident's prodding pricks as it, too, seeks entry through its skin. Covered in a warm, sticky ooze, the creature dies with a billow of steam as its body is cleft at last, the hunter sighing wearily above it.

“I don't think I can eat this,” the hunter says, looking to his companion.

“Wha?” asks he, chewing his way through a large bite of his own beast. “'oo muh irrip?”

“No, too much to drink last night.” He sets down his weapons and wipes his hands clean. “Which of us thought it was a good plan to get hammered the night before we drove home?”

His friend grins, bits of carcass between his teeth. “'at us all meh,” he proudly replies around the mouthful.

“You're so gross.”

Dean swallows the last of his breakfast, and slides his plate to the end of the table. He stretches his arms over his head; the unbuttoned sleeves of his green flannel fall to three-quarter length as he leans back as far as the diner booth will allow. Dean kicks at Sam's foot beneath the table as he sits back up.

“And yet,” he says, reaching across the table to pull over Sam's unwanted waffle, “here you are, giving me more ammunition. Sweet, buttery, golden ammunition.”

“I seem to have lost my mind at some point during the intermission last night.” Sam grabs his mug; he gazes into it as he swishes the quickly-cooling sludge at the bottom. He'd hoped the sweetened caffeine would magically solve his hangover, but all it's doing is making him twice as likely to make a run for the diner's sad excuse for a restroom. As Sam has already made the acquaintance of the porcelain occupant of the single stall, he feels another visit entirely unnecessary.

“Wha's 'at?”

“Can you eat with your mouth mostly closed for once in your life?” asks Sam, wincing as his stomach churns.

Dean smiles again. “And miss all the fun of making you bitch, Samantha? I'll pass.” He takes another bite, exaggerating his slow chew.

“Ugh, why did I want to stay on the road with you?”

“Hey, all you did was agree with her sentiment. 'Two of us against the world,' not, 'Two of us and Miss Fucking Manners against the tea party.'”

Sam rolls his eyes so hard that he gets a little seasick. The room sways a little; the bench feels unlevel, like he could slide out at any moment. He puts his elbows on the table, resting his forehead in his palms.

“Dude, you look _awful_ ,” Dean says with a hint of concern. “Don't tell me you're getting too old to celebrate with your big brother.” He leans across the table and ruffles Sam's hair, earning a sickly groan. “You gonna retire to Florida and play broccoli ball with the old folks?”

“Bocci ball.”

“Wha?”

“It's called bocci—” Sam interrupts himself to put a hand in front of Dean's face, obscuring his chewing. “Bocci ball.”

“See?  You even know what it is.” Dean shakes his head, chuckling. “You're like thirty going on seventy-five.”

“We played it in gym in elementary school.”

“Okay, so you're thirty going on eight going on seventy-five.” He pauses. “That's a lot of fucking math. Stop being so complicated, Sammy.”

“Come on,” replies Sam, eyes closed as he leans back, rubbing his face. “Don't tell me you didn't get the ancient sports curriculum.”

“Nah.” He spears another bite of waffle, lifting it up to carefully pour more syrup on it. “I skipped out.”

“Of gym class.” Sam cracks open one eye to give Dean an incredulous look. “In elementary school.”

Dean smirks. “Yeah, man. You think this bad boy image developed itself? Besides,” he begins, cramming the too-large piece in his mouth, “who wan's'a _Sweh oo the Ol'ies_?”

“Don't forget the square-dancing unit.”

“Gah'ammit, tha's gah'amn torchur.”

“ _Will you please just swallow already?_ ” Sam scrunches his face as his brother bursts out laughing, spraying little bits of waffle. His stomach lurches. “Seriously, Dean?”

“Betcha 'ave a say 'at a alla the ladies.”

Sam sighs as he quickly pushes himself up from the table, attempting discretion instead of covering his mouth like he wants to. “At least no one's saying it to me.”

“Wha' a 'ell ish 'at ahpposh'a mean?”

Sam forgets himself and spins around on his heel too quickly. “Well,” he says, balancing himself with all the grace of a wobbly baby giraffe, “I was referring to your inability to eat like an adult. But, then again,” Sam continues over his shoulder, moving with the momentum he can't stop, “it really isn't any of my business what you do with your mouth.”

Dean stiffens, gulps down his half-chewed bite, and questions Sam's back as he strides toward the back of the diner. “What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Subtext,” answers Sam, avoiding the raised eyebrow of the waitress. Dean grumbles a response, but Sam ignores it, careening green-gilled into the men's room door, fumbling with the door knob until it gives and so does he, half-falling into the toilet. The door snaps shut behind him, and he sinks to his knees, hugging the bowl of his new best friend as they become reacquainted. The porcelain is ice-cold against his cheek where he rests it against the lip of the commode; Sam closes his eyes, choosing to focus on how lovely it feels rather than dwell on when it was last cleaned.

He breathes in slowly through his mouth (one, two, three) and exhales quickly through his nose ( _onetwothree_ ) for a few minutes until the nausea subsides. His legs begin to cramp from the awkward angle of his too-tall frame. He tries to shift, but stops as soon as his stomach protests. His mouth is dry, and his ears are ringing, and his hands are trembling, and—

Wait.

_Wait._

That's not his ears ringing.

Sam bangs his elbow against the tiled wall as he fumbles into his jeans pocket, fishing out his cell. He holds it upright in front of his sideways face, squinting to check the caller I.D. It's a local number. He clumsily thumbs the button to answer it.

“Hel—” Sam swallows back a mouthful of bile, then tries again. “Ugh, hello?”

“Dean needs to email Marie,” answers a serious young woman on the other end. Sam blinks and pulls the phone away from his ear. He checks the number again, wracking his brain to place a name to the voice. Local, local, _local_...

“Maeve?” Sam asks.

“Um, duh, and/or hello.”

“Aren't you a little young for _Archer_?”

“I'm sorry,” Maeve snaps back, “I thought this was Sam Winchester, not my father.”

Sam sighs, rubbing at his eyes to conceal the blinding glare from the lone bulb overhead. “What do you want?”

“I said, 'Dean needs to email Marie,'” she huffs back, obviously insulted by his lack of attention.

“What? Why― _oh God, my head_ ―wait, how did you get this number?”

“Because she needs his email address in order to send him the fanfiction recommendations he requested,” Maeve answers, a hint of boredom in her voice. “And I borrowed your phone in the light booth while you were distracted by all the fancy modern technology, old man.”

Sam screws up his face in annoyance as he shifts his weight and eases himself to sit next to the toilet.

“Wow. That was audible,” Maeve says.

“What?”

“Your bitchface, Bitchface.”

“And why can't Marie call herself?” asks Sam, too sickened to rebut.

“She is, because I am.”

“Pardon?”

“Anyone who wants Marie,” Maeve begins, “has to go through me. Think of me as the tenacious Zhu Li to her brilliant Varrick.”

“Pardon?” repeats Sam from behind his hand as his breakfast battles his stomach.

“Sam,” Maeve deadpans, “if you haven't seen _Legend of Korra_ , I don't think we can be friends.”

“I make it a point to not seek friendship with teenage girls,” he spits out as the tiles divide and merge in front of his face. “But, for what it's worth, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.”

Maeve pauses, then says, “I withhold my judgment for now.”

Sam takes a moment to replay the conversation in his head. “Did you say…  Fanfiction recommendations?”

“Yes,” Maeve replies, exasperated. Sam hears the impatient clicking of an ink pen over the line, the noise both hypnotic and slightly grating. “Dean and Marie had a chat regarding the unpublished unpublished works of Mr. Edlund, and she offered to rec some fics with better plots.”

“It's not plot he was talking about,” Sam snaps, “it's our lives.”

“Regardless, they're very poorly written.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, shaking his head.

“Well,” begins Maeve, “you hit a dog, which somehow made you completely forget about rescuing your big brother and guarding your charge for an entire year. I mean, _who does that?_ Oh, and speaking of your absent mind, Professor, when you came back from Hell, not only did you leave your soul, you also completely forgot Adam.”

“Who's Adam, again?” asks Sam, willing his forehead to merge with the tank.

“Your half-brother! What the actual, Winchester? Oh, and then there was—”

“I didn't want you to _actually_ tell me about it,” he groans.

“Then don't ask,” Maeve replies matter-of-factly. “Seriously, how do you do that?”

Sam wipes the sour grapes from his face while doing his absolute best not to think about sour grapes themselves. “It's a gift.”

“So you'll have him email her?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. Your cooperation in this matter is most appreciated.”

Sam hesitates before proceeding, as breaking the heart of a teenage girl is unwise. “You do know it's incredibly unlikely,” he says, tiptoeing around a hiccup, “that he'll read anything you send, right?”

Maeve was also blessed with an audible face, and her scowl echoes through the receiver. “Why?”

“Dean doesn't really read. I mean,” Sam quickly corrects himself, “he does for a case... Sometimes. But for fun, he just reads the same four or five books over—” His stomach churns again. “—and over—” He feels the tell-tale creeping, crawling sensation of impending doom up his esophagus. “—And over.” Sam breathes out like a woman in labor too long, full of cautious terror and prayer for narcotics. “He takes his slow, sweet time reading them, too, but he doesn't read anything new. Dean's perfectly content memorizing one author, one poem, one passage— _oh God no_.”

“Why?” yells Maeve as she pulls the phone away from her ear and the sounds of sickness.

“Uh 'unno.” He spits, then mumbles, “It's just a Dean thing,” into the protective shield of his fingers.

“You want to take a stab at it, or are you too busy dying in the toilet?”

Sam starts to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, reconsiders, and reaches for the toilet paper. “How'd you know I was in—”

“You mean beyond the retching?” Maeve replies. “The acoustics. An enclosed stall is essentially a poor man's sound booth with a place to shit. Or hurl, apparently.”

Sam chuckles. “Guess you could say the quality stinks.”

Silence fills the line.

“Maeve?”

“Dean?”

“No, still Sam.”

“After that pun, are you absolutely certain?” she scoffs.

Sam has the decency to check for her. “Uh, yeah, giant hands, giant feet, boxers, and well-conditioned hair. I'm me.”

“Boxers?” she asks, confused. “So what does Dean wear?”

“You really don't want to know.”

“No,” Maeve finally concedes, “but I'm sure Marie does.”

“Then tell _her_ to ask _him_ ,” he replies with a sneer.

“I would, and then _she_ would.” She sighs, faking wistfulness. “If only we had his email address...”

“Seriously,” begins Sam, “he's primarily a re-reader. He isn't going to care.”

“Then I suppose you'll just have to prank him into it,” she demands.

Sam bangs his elbow into the toilet paper dispenser as he rolls haphazardly to his feet. “I can't figure out why this is so important to you.”

“It isn't,” she concedes. “But it is to Marie, who said, and I quote—” The shuffling of papers fills the line. “Ah, here we are. I quote, 'We have to help those clueless, awkward bastards realize their potential for passion somehow. We will not be the cock that blocks their epic love.”

“That's...” Sam searches for adequate words. “Oddly poetic?”

“That's Marie,” agrees Maeve.

“Still, I'm not sure we should get involved.”

Maeve's pause is palpable. Sam takes the time to dust the detritus of the bathroom floor from his jeans. He looks down at his hands, covered in toilet paper lint and crumbs, sighs, and wipes them off on his back pockets. More single-ply is jerked from the roll, the rusted metal holder creaking its annoyance at being disturbed.

“Sam,” she says at last.

“Hrm,” he grunts, dabbing the scratchy paper against his face.

“You're going to help us.”

“Am I now?”

“Yes.”

He tosses the shreds into the bowl and flushes. “It's not my place to play matchmaker to the unwilling.”

“Oh come off it, Winchester,” Maeve derides. “You ship it and you know it.”

“Well—”

“Or you could spend the rest of your life babysitting a self-denying man-child and the angel who spurned the will of Heaven for him, dodging their longing stares and subtextual conversations.”

Sam hesitates. He’s lost in thought, phone pinned to his ear with his shoulder, hands dripping with cold water and cheap, over-scented soap. He thinks about the haunting loneliness in Dean's eyes whenever he spoke of Cas after Purgatory. He remembers the wistful note to his voice when asked to describe him. He considers the fact that Cas sped across the states toward the bunker, half-dead, for Dean; that he drank another angel's grace, remorseless, for Dean; that Cas did it, all of it, to save Dean's ass yet again.  No matter the cost, Cas stands behind them. Actually, Cas stands behind Dean fairly often. Then Sam realizes how many times he's caught said angel almost staring at his brother’s ass and—

“Tell you what,” he says, catching his own eyes in the mirror. “How about I just text you my email address, you send me the links, and we call it a day?”

“I knew you'd see things our way.”

“Shut up.”

“We'll be in touch.” Sam hears her call out excitedly to someone in the background as she hangs up, and wonders exactly what he's gotten himself into.

* * *

The Seven gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“I hear you have news for us, Peppermint,” one says, breaking the silence at last. A carefully manicured hand strikes a match; the flame illuminates her face as she lights the wick of her lantern.

Marie removes her hood with one hand, the other moving automatically to readjust her beret and glasses. “I don't, Progenitor,” she explains, lighting the birthday candle in front of her, “but Marcie does.”

“Marcie―report.”

Maeve likewise removes her hood, leaning into view, black bangs swooping sideways over her own glasses. She sets her votive aflame, nonplussed by the ocular obstruction. “The board has been set, Progenitor. The Knight is in play and the Bishop is on the move. We are prepared to castle when the opportunity arises.”

“Excellent. Rosencrantz? Guildenstern?”

“Present,” chime two male voices in near unison.

“You forgot to light your candles!” chides the one called Progenitor.

“Whoops,” Rosencrantz says.

“Sorry,” parrots Guildenstern. They each shove a flashlight beneath their chins.

“Oh for the love of—”

“Is all this pomp and circumstance actually necessary?” a new voice asks. “Can we not keep this simple?”

“Sage,” Progenitor says through gritted teeth, “this may be the only chance I ever have to lead a secret society. We're going to do it right, and that means code names, cryptic speech, and ceremonial midnight meetings. So spark your candle already.”

“I still don't see why _you_ have to lead,” mutters the Sage, carefully lighting a scented pillar so as to avoid burning herself.

“Technically, the Conductor is on point,” Marie reminds them.

“Are they even here, Sir?” asks Maeve skeptically.

The tiny flame of a Bic flicks over Skype, but the Conductor says not a word.

“As you all know,” begins the Progenitor, “I was elected by the King to organize this mission due to my familiarity with the players in question. Sage's role in this is already complete, plus she lacks a certain... Impartiality.”

The Sage adds, “I think I should be offended by that.”

“Are you kidding?” gasps Guildenstern. “We're feeding them your words!”

“Not to mention you're the only one who can contact the Wizard,” says Rosencrantz.

“She's also the only one of us the Conductor will speak to.”

Rosencrantz nods, then tips his head sideways toward his partner. “What he said.”

The Sage sighs in defeat. “Why do I feel like I'm in a bad parody of _Hot Fuzz_?” Her phone vibrates, and she checks the text received. “'The Conductor would like to formally apologize for watching too many Simon Pegg films recently,'” she reads aloud. “So I guess I _am_ in a bad parody of _Hot Fuzz_.”

The Conductor's Bic flicks twice.

“Oh,” the Sage replies. “Oh, good. I really wasn't looking forward to crusty jugglers.”

The Progenitor groans, face-planting into her keyboard. “Can we please focus?”

“Right.” The Sage clears her throat, and flips through her script. “ _Ahem_. Right. Uh, 'Then let us stop the clock and end this turn. For now, the pawns must―' What is with all the chess analogies, Cee?”

The Conductor's Bic shines a steady point of light. It moves to the right as its owner shrugs.

“No. That answer is unacceptable. You will explain.”

A faint stream of beeps and taps is heard from the Conductor; shortly after, the Sage checks her phone. She looks up, then back down to scan the text again.

“Your mind is terrifying sometimes, you know that?”

The Bic flicks once in response, the flame trembling as the Conductor giggles.

“For fuck's sake,” the Progenitor says in exasperation, “ _I'll_ read it. 'For now, the pawns must play amongst themselves; it is ultimately up to the Court to choose advancement.'”

“Let the Wizard be summoned for consult,” the Seven announce together.

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

The drive back to Lebanon had been twice as long as necessary. While Dean empathized with his brother—after all, isn't he usually the one recovering from a bender?—it had started to become tiresome after the fifth stop on the side of the highway for Sam to be ill. This was, of course, followed by twenty to thirty minutes of Sam cleaning himself up and pulling himself together, steeling himself for the next hour of open road. And, yes, Dean had swerved a few times when it wasn't completely necessary―

“You could have made that lane change like a mile ago!”

“Cry me another man tear, Princess.”

―And perhaps he'd cranked Kansas and was singing along a little louder than usual―

“I swear you're just _trying_ to make me sick at this point.”

“Carry on my waaay-ward Sa-a-am. Don't you think of lukewarm Spa-am.”

“ _Oh God, pull over, pull over_.”

―And maybe, _maybe_ he'd finally reached a point where he was honestly curious if anything was left in Sam's stomach―

“I'll just, uh... I'll wait over here then.”

“You can't make me puke and then complain about the smell!”

But really, who could blame Dean? Finally human again; finally with Sam again; finally on the road and himself again. There was so much ground between them to regain, and he knew the best way to prove to Sam that his brother was back was to crank The Dean up all the way to eleven. He hadn't properly pranked him in years and, someday, he was sure Sam would look back on this trip and laugh.

Hopefully.

After the sixth, seventh, and eighth stops, however, Dean was seriously considering searching the Impala for hex bags. Luckily, Sam had passed out in the passenger seat and snored the rest of the way home, so Dean was able to cross “tear apart Baby (I'm still so sorry)” off of his mental checklist.

The hour is early again as he pulls into the garage of the bunker, pulls a blanket over a still-sleeping Sam (like hell he's going to tote a moose up all those flights), and pulls himself upstairs and toward the shower.

A few minutes later, Sam's cell blares to life in his shirt pocket, jerking him out of his slumber and head first into the ceiling of the car. Sam curses, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands before checking his phone. He curses again as it slips out of his fingers and into the floorboard of the car. It pulses once, chirping to needlessly alert him that he's missed a call. Sam fishes blindly around his feet for his cell as it begins ringing again, and he finally places the tune to which the seven-syllabled sample belongs. “'Heat of the Moment.' Asia,” he says to no one in particular. “Goddammit, Dean.” He hits the send button right before he misses the call a second time.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“Did you get the list?” Maeve asks impatiently.

Sam struggles with the blanket. “I haven't even checked my email yet.”

“You have five minutes,” she informs him, then promptly hangs up.

He considers leaving the car, hesitates, then chooses to simply fire up his laptop in the front seat. As Sam double-clicks the Chrome icon on his desktop, he wonders for the hundredth time how the bunker has wireless, but, like so many things in his life, he's learned it's better not to ask. He logs into his newest Gmail account―username soleless_sam, password mJj$D103DejCbkD―and opens his singular message as the phone rings again.

“So did you get it?” Maeve asks, more impatient than before.

“I did get your email,” says Sam, “but it's less a list and more a link to one author's stories.”

“A one-item list is still a list.”

“Fine, whatever,” he acquiesces. “But why _this_ author? Why betty days?”

Sam hears the flipping of pages on Maeve's side of the call as she mumbles to herself. “I know we expected this, we discussed it, I wrote it dow―aha!” Maeve clears her throat and reads, “'We decided that Dean would be more likely to keep reading if he connected with the style of the author. betty days' work has a distinctly Beat cadence.'”

“Do you seriously have crib notes for this conversation?”

“Do you not?”

“Why would I?” Sam asks, incredulous.

Maeve huffs. “No preparation. This is why you two are always caught with your pants down.”

“Oh Edlund,” another young voice says with elan. “I wish they were always caught with their pants down.”

“Simmer down, Marie!” Maeve chides over the distinct _whoosh_ and _thunk_ of a stack of papers connecting with someone's head.

Sam blinks. “Am I on speakerphone?”

Maeve, ignoring him, continues on. “'The subject matter is varied, so he is sure to find something of interest. Finally, her stories lean towards the psychoanalytical, which encourages the careful, attentive reader to analyze themselves.'”

“They're also really, really hot,” Marie adds helpfully.

“And that.”

Sam hasn't stopped blinking. “Wait, you're sending me _porn_?”

“It's called homoerotica, Sam,” replies an irritated Maeve.

“The difference being?”

“There's plot and character development, for points one and two,” Maeve begins, the barest hint of excitement creeping into her voice. “Three, these stories are products of the transformative fiction subgenre. That means these poor, neglected characters―”

“Us,” Sam deadpans. “You mean us.”

“―These poor, neglected, horribly rude and interrupting characters are rescued from their oft-cruel author by an eager, nurturing fanbase. They're given fresh air to breathe! Free range to grow! Real, honest-to-Edlund _emotional evolution_ , Sam. Complex theories and ideas take center stage as heteronormativity and cultured expectations of gender are thrown into a curse box, salted, and burned.”

Sam frowns, tilting his head slightly. “I thought you loved these books.”

“I never said it was a perfect relationship,” Maeve huffs. “There's an equal amount of roses and restraining orders. Even so, the fact remains that fan-generated content provides minority group representation, a safe space in which to explore controversial topics, and the types of relationships that fans would read in canon if their wants and needs were truly understood by the publishing powers that be.”

“And there's sex!” adds Marie emphatically. “ _Gay_ sex.”

“So it's porn.” Sam hears the clatter of a clipboard thrown to the ground; it's soon followed by the rustle of falling paper and the tip-tap of an ink pen landing end to end. He switches the phone to his left hand and respective ear, closing his laptop and putting it back in his bag while straining to catch snippets of conversation between Maeve and Marie.

“...why I hate straight white cis men...can't appreciate art...smarter than this...scholarship to Stanford...like Team Free _Morons_...”

“...about my precious baby...hands full with Dean...Progenitor warned us...”

Sam shakes his head, but can't help but feel that Maeve has a point regarding his over-educated stupidity. It was his rashly-made choice to join Dean and become a hunter again. He had easily justified the decision, and perhaps vengeance for Jess's murder was the right path, but he didn't have to stay once the job was done. Dean's decision to deal at the crossroads and bring Sam back to life was one made without consulting Sam, but the rest? All of that laid on Sam's shoulders.

As tired as Sam is of Dean ignoring his wishes, of disallowing him agency regarding his own deaths, he understands the desperate urge to save and damn the consequences. Sam had shocked himself at how easily he'd forgiven Dean allowing the angel Gadreel to possess his body, but he had lashed out because he wanted Dean to feel as betrayed as he did. It was childish, and human, and there wasn't room for either of those things in a hunter's life. He'd wanted to hurt Dean, and Sam had certainly succeeded. Now here he was, in Dean's shoes, forcing a reluctant brother back from the precipice he'd prefer to jump from.

Sometimes, when he's alone and questioning the necessity of the road he's taken so far, Sam thinks that maybe Dean was better off in Hell or Purgatory, or perhaps he himself was better off in the Cage with Lucifer, for it seems that the only way to keep the brothers apart and let one of them find _joy de vivre_ is to forcibly lock them on different planes of existence. The problem is that neither will ever choose to accept the other's absence. Sam would never say it to Dean's face, but the _worst_ part of not being the sacrificial lamb in the unfinished trials, the _worst_ part of not being allowed to die, was that it meant they were both still together, still hurting each other in an endless Promethean cycle. Not only had they never learned how to love someone without leaning on them for everything, they'd never been shown how to leave someone behind and live without them.

“Dammit, Maeve, look what...mean he's _brooding_ now...”

“...immature bastard ought to...self-preservationless Winchestering...Solomon would have wept...”

Sam makes to open the door, but the handle breaks off in his hand. He stares blankly at it for a few seconds before laying it in the driver's seat. Instead, he reaches for the crank to roll down the window―it wouldn't be the first time he's maneuvered his way out through it. Much to his dismay, it comes off in his hand, as well. _What the hell did Dean do to this car while he was a demon?_ Sam wonders to himself while trying to manually jiggle the mechanism for the door.

“...some innuendo for you, Marie...”

“...jiggle my mechanism...”

“...so gross...”

“... _seen his hands_?”

Sam rolls his eyes and officially stops paying attention as the two girls continue to argue about him. Either all of his years of breaking into and breaking out of various places has paid off or someone Up There is looking out for him (though Sam finds the latter option extremely suspect, unless, of course, it's the Marx Brothers), because the door finally gives way. Unfortunately, so does Sam, and he tumbles out clutching his messenger bag protectively against his chest as he lands hard on his back, cracking his head on the cement.

“Sam!” Marie shouts. “Are you okay?”

“Kind of wondering if I've unknowingly picked up a lucky rabbit's foot,” he begins, “but that's hardly the worst way I've exited a vehicle. I'll live.”

“We already knew that,” Maeve snaps. “You're essentially a giant Harry Potter.”

“Behave,” admonishes Marie. “I know you're mad because he doesn't get us, but it's not Sam's fault he's sexually-repressed, Maeve. He's simply a product of his upbringing.”

“I'm what now?” he inquires, confused.

Maeve laughs once, like a punch to the gut. “Is that supposed to be a joke? It's _absolutely_ Sam's fault. He refuses to understand our art because he's embraced his misogynistic heritage. Sam dismisses it as porn because it makes him feel better about his existence sans satisfactory coitus. Which, again, is his fault as _he's_ the one who chose to stop dating because he's _Kiss of Death: Accidental Sex Murderer_.”

“I'm... I'm _what_ now?” asks an increasingly bewildered Sam.

“It's not his fault nearly every woman he loves dies!” Marie replies, steadfastly holding her ground. The slap of one fist into another palm is heard, punctuating her claim. “Besides,” she says more calmly, “that's why he's meant to be with Dean.”

Sam snaps to attention, sitting up with a sharp cry of, “ _I'M WHAT NOW_?”

“Marie, we agreed we weren't going to meta Wincest into this,” Maeve says with an air of authority.

“But, Maeve, we can get all three of them together! Wincestiel is within our grasp!” Marie's whine belies her desperation, climbing in pitch to match Sam's desire to climb back into the car and never leave it again. “Don't you see the power we have? We have to seize this moment!”

His eyes dart back and forth, side to side. “I'm... I'm going to hang up now.”

“That's likely for the best, Mr. Winchester,” Maeve agrees as Marie prattles on in the background. “Let us know how it goes. Oh, and Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Print them out. Give them to Dean. But don't, under _any_ circumstances, read the fanfiction.”

Sam's eyebrows meet in the middle of his forehead. “Why no―“ But the line is empty. He snarls and throws his phone in frustration. It bounces off the tire of a nearby classic automobile and boomerangs back into his shin. He stares at it, wondering if he's somehow been shifted into an alternate cartoon reality.

Sam sighs in defeat, lying back down on the floor as he remembers he's already been there once.

* * *

The water pressure was fabulous, just like always, and Dean feels fabulous, just like...

Well, never, actually. Dean Winchester is _not_ fabulous.

“ _Not_ fabulous,” he says aloud, reminding himself. He relaxes again, settling back into the pillows where he sits on his bed, which _is_ fabulous, because it remembers him. Dean also thanks the long-dead Man of Letters who left his fabulous fluffy bathrobe in the closet. How the hell it hadn't been dry-rotted and dank and dusty when he discovered it, Dean doesn't know, but he's grateful for whatever magic protected it. He opens his newspaper (unfabulous) and flips to the entertainment section (mildly fabulous), where he finds an article about his favorite show (most certainly fabulous).

“Hey, Sam!” Dean calls out as he hears his brother shuffle past his door.

Sam sighs, turns around, and ducks his head in the door. “What's up, Dean?”

“Did you know they're renewing _Dr. Sexy, M.D._ for an eleventh season?”

“Oh really,” replies Sam with an air of boredom as Dean nods excitedly. “Haven't they covered pretty much every disease and doctor dating scenario known to man by now?”

Dean shifts a bit on the bed. “Well, yeah, but―”

“I mean, seriously, what's left for the writers to work with?” Sam asks jokingly. “Dimensional rifts?

“Nah, they covered that in season six. There was a portal in the morgue.”

Sam blinks. “You're shitting me.”

“No shit.  Dr. Piccolo stumbled into an alternate reality while performing a routine autopsy. But we found out in season seven that all the crap that happened in season six was just her last thoughts because she had been in a coma and then died in the season premier.”

“Oh,” says Sam.

“She came back later, though. Different actress. Doctor Palmer helped her fake her death to escape her family, then performed experimental plastic surgery.”

“Oh,” repeats Sam. “That's, uh. That's... Creative.”

“And _then_ —“

“Do we have a printer?” Sam interjects. “I need one.”

Dean frowns and crosses his arms, automatically suspicious. “What for?”

“Uh...”

“Is it a case?” asks Dean, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

“Maybe?” Sam replies shiftily.

“Spit it out, Sammy.”

“Don't worry,” assures Sam, “the printer will.”

Dean frowns further, but gives in. “I think Charlie left one of those old screechy, scratchy things. You know,” he expounds, illustrating his points with his hands, “they sound like nails on a chalkboard and the pages are all attached to each other like paper dolls and they've got that... That _perforatey_ stuff on the sides that curls up and makes great spitwads.”

Sam hesitates. “You mean a line printer?”

“Sure. That.”

“That's not exactly helpful. I doubt that ancient monster of a computer connects to the internet.”

“Nah, it's cool,” Dean says with a smile. “Charlie took care of that when she fixed the Wicked Witch damage before she left.”

Sam shakes his head.“Of course she did.”

“All those green lines kind of take the mystery out of Miss October, though.”

“And of course you used it for porn.” Sam rolls his eyes and heads back down the hall, veering toward the stairs leading down to the control room.

Dean spreads his arms wide and calls out after him, “But the internet is really, really _great_ for porn!”

“ _Avenue Q_ ,” mumbles Sam.

* * *

An hour later, and Sam is completely, utterly, _horribly_ bored. The constant _skrit-skrit-skrit-skreeek_ of the line printer is testing his last nerve. Twice now, he's had to stand and manually feed the fan-roll of paper through, the perforation mangled by a printer half-dead; at some point, he's certain he'll have to walk over to the archives and search for another roll of ink ribbon. He tried to browse on his laptop, but, for once, the naturally-occurring cloud of wifi has failed him. So now Sam stands, watching the lines print one by one as the completed pages spool over into the floor.

At last, all one-hundred twenty-nine pages of the first document are completed. He queues up the next story on the list, and picks up the stack of [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634).

Surely a peek wouldn't hurt.

He is bored, after all.

“'I want to have sex,' Castiel announces suddenly,” Sam reads aloud. “Dean chokes on his gulp of Baja Blast...” He trails off, simply scanning the sentences at first.

By page six, he's reading a bit more quickly.

By page ten, he's wondering if he really does get that frustrated with Dean and Cas.

By page fourteen, he no longer cares.

By page nineteen, he wants to strangle his brother.

By page thirty-six, he's hard as hell thinking about—

Thinking about—

Sam stops thinking and keeps reading.

By page forty-nine, he can't help himself anymore. Sam wants to finish the whole story, but the pressure is too much to bear. The zip of his fly is masked by the far away scratch of the printer; the click of his belt buckle hitting the floor, not so much. He frees himself from his boxers, and takes cock in hand, a slight shudder of relief coursing through him. There's no finesse, no technique―his fist moves with a mind of its own as he suddenly braces himself against the old computer with his other hand, letting [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634) flutter down to the tiles.

It's like Sam's thirteen years old all over again. He was supposed to be at rehearsal, but half the cast had mono, so it was canceled at the last minute. Sam had let himself into the hotel room and gone straight for the bathroom and the shower, book bag, coat, and all. He had just shut off the water and started drying off when he heard the door to the room creak open, then shut heavily with the weight of two horny teenagers behind it. The bed creaked far more loudly when Dean and his girl-of-the-week collapsed on top of the thin comforter.

Sam remembers exactly what they sounded like together, Dean all whispered encouragement and questions to her wordless, moaning answers. He memorized the pitch to Dean's voice when he gently asked, “This your first time, sweetheart?”

“Gonna kiss you all over, make you feel so good,” had immediately wormed its way into Sam's mental masturbatory audio file and never shown itself out. Sam absolutely cannot recall the girl he pictured his brother with, who Dean encouraged to hold him down and ride him after she'd shouted through a third orgasm on his fingers and his tongue. If pressed to answer, Sam would likely admit that he'd never bothered imagining traits for Dean's unknown lover. But now, as Sam jerks himself mindlessly, now there's six feet of tan and lean muscle hovering over his brother, brown hair askew, blue eyes wide and intense and focused on Dean.

Dean, who's got one hand buried in his own hair and the other wrapped around Cas' cock.

Cas, whose strong hands are pressing down on Dean's chest, pinning him to the bed.

Dean, who is as vocal as with any other conquest he ever brought back as he drowns in the sight of Cas silently fucking himself.

Cas, who needs no reassurance, but loves to watch Dean undo himself with his own wicked words, loves to watch him arch and writhe and strive for rhythm, _loves to watch_.

Dean, whose sentences fall apart at the seams just as surely as he is.

Cas, who finally understands to give in, who sees that to lose is to win, to spend is to gain, who throws his head back and curses once as he comes and Dean is done for then, grabbing Cas' hips and flips, thrusting and swearing and setting a sweltering step, burying his face in the crook of his lover's neck as he climaxes and Sam joins them both with a groan, a shudder, a gasp, spilling hot and white, all over his fingers and onto the floor, just as in that bathroom a lifetime before...

...Sam, who realizes he's just gotten off to the mental image of his brother fucking his best friend with the aid of an unknown fan of pulp fiction and some never-confessed memories from middle school.

He scans the room for the Trickster as he quickly gropes for his pants, because there's no way this can be real.

* * *

The Seven gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“You weren't supposed to move the Bishop, Marcie,” the Progenitor scolds, her lantern casting an eerie glow to her sharp chin. “You can't just go around ad-libbing all willy-nilly.”

Maeve's votive showcases her resting frown. “I didn't. It's written as an optional aside in the footnotes. See?” She elbows Marie out of the way, flipping to the last page on her clipboard and shoving it into the web camera. “'Should an actor so choose, a warning may be delivered.'”

“' _To the audience_.'”

Her frown intensifies, and she whips the clipboard back around and holds it up in front of her face, quickly scanning it. “ _Scheiss_. I told you we shouldn't have used the school's mimeograph to make my copy, Sir. That purple blob wasn't errant toner, it was smeared words!” Marie has the decency to look sheepish as her conspirator lowers the clipboard again, adding, “Anyway, Peppermint invoked the Wincest clause; I was afraid we would lose him completely unless I piqued his curiosity.”

“Peppermint,” Rosencrantz starts, “you know Wincest wasn't part of the plan.”

“No matter how much some of us want it,” grumbles Gildenstern, his eyes watering from gazing into his flashlight too long.

Marie looks down at her birthday candle, her breath causing the flame to flutter. “I know, I know. I'm still riding director's high; I couldn't help myself.”

“Ask Hitler how well that defense worked with Poland.” Maeve wilts a bit as Marie turns to glare at her. “What?”

“That was in extremely poor taste, Marcie.”

“It's not like I said it on purpose!” Maeve sputters, gesturing to her clipboard. “The script made me do it.” She smirks before continuing. “I was only following orders.”

“Wow, Cee,” the Sage says with a slight sense of disapproval. “You really thought it was a good idea to give the Nazi jokes to a teenage girl?”

The Conductor's Bic flicks once and holds, casting light on an enthusiastic smile.

“Regardless,” continues the Progenitor, moving forward, “whether or not the Bishop reads the Scoresheets is immaterial. Our end goal remains the same―canon Destiel. If we have to sacrifice him to do so...” She trails off, attempting to hide the quiver in her voice. “If we have to sacrifice him to do so, then so be it.“

Marie perks up a bit. “I love hurt/comfort.”

“Seriously, though,” the Sage interjects, “what's next, rape jokes?” Her phone pings almost immediately. “'Hey, it worked in _Blazing Saddles_.'” The Sage sighs wearily. “Please don't tell me that was all just a set-up for a Mel Brooks reference.”

Guildenstern shrugs. “It's good to be the king.”

“You know, the two of you do have kind of a Bialystock & Bloom thing going on,” says Rosencrantz.

The Conductor's grin impossibly brightens.

“Ah. Mel Brooks referenc _es_ ,” emphasizes the Sage. “Because plurality makes it so much better, Cee.”

The Conductor holds up three fingers.

“Yeah, yeah, rules of humor, I know.”

The collective sound of page-turning fills the air.

“What news from the Wizard?” asks the Progenitor.

The Sage straightens up. “The Wizard sends greetings, but also a warning.”

“A warning?” sing all but the Conductor.

“Yes, a warni―Ugh, the pace is so _slow_. So much exposition. Can they not just read the fics and fuck like rabbits already? This is explicit slash, not _Lord of the Rings_.”

“Sage,” sighs the Progenitor heavily, “what did the Wizard say?”

“'Don't over-reach. Stick to the plan. Keep it sunny, keep it funny, keep it Destiel—' that's _four_ references there, Cee, by the way. Two from the same show.”

The Conductor snaps loudly in lieu of swearing.

“Anything else?” the Progenitor asks, moving her hand in a circular motion, encouraging the Sage to continue.

“'Let the Wookie win.'”

“That's it?”

The Sage huffs a laugh. “That's all they wrote.”

The Conductor sniggers; the Bic flicks once.

“Then for now,” the Seven say, “we shall wait and watch.”

Five screens go dark, leaving the Sage and the Conductor alone in the Skype chat.

“Marcie wasn't ad-libbing,” the Sage states levelly. “The warning was deliberate. You planned that.”

The Conductor's Bic flicks once.

“Maeve and Marie are loose cannons with loose canon. Can't you be more careful?”

The Conductor's Bic flicks twice.

The Sage shakes her head, her hood shifting enough to reveal a few wisps of brilliant red hair. “Do you know what you're doing, Cee? You're playing with fire, that's what.”

The Conductor points to the Bic with a pale finger lit solely by the glare of a monitor.

“You _also_ know perfectly well how I meant it,” replies the Sage. She chuckles, and adds, “That was cute, though.”

The Conductor's hooded head tips slightly forward, either in embarrassment, thanks, or (very likely) both.

“Since we're going over my notes, I'd like to point out that, for the record, calling Maeve 'Marcie' is really, _really_ confusing since there's already a Marie.”

The Conductor shrugs.

“Don't get me wrong, the analogy works, it's just... Well. Confusing.”

The Conductor shrugs again.

“Everyone's gone, Cee, you can speak now.”

“--- ------ ---- ----- --------,” says the Conductor.

“Oh. I guess you can't.”

The Conductor's Bic flicks twice.

“Seriously, though, why does everything you touch turn into a novel?”

“---- ----, - -----,” the Conductor replies.

“More like a curse.”

“---, --------.”

The Sage rests her head in her hands. “This is turning into a case fic, isn't it?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam has known for many, many years that the world is out to get him. He's been chased by demons. Harangued by copies of himself. Tormented by Lucifer. Sam has fallen prey to cursed objects, overzealous witches, misguided angels, and well-meaning hunters.

He never expected smut to be his undoing.

He wonders why John never mentioned the possibility in his journal.

But here Sam is, unshowered, unslept, unpantsed, and unshaven, huddled in front of his laptop, locked in his room, devouring fanfic like a parched man drinks water at an oasis. He'd spent a few hours huddled in shame in the corner of the computer room, finishing [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634) as the printer scratched out several shorter fics. Sam has never really been a fan of short stories—[ _East of Eden_](https://books.google.com/books?id=OPy6E5ZhXs0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=east+of+eden+pdf+free+download&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hjs9Vf2IHoa9sAWu7ICoBw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) and [_Ulysses_](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm) are more his style, because when you only have room in your satchel for a few books, it's best to maximize your word count—but he already knows he's going to make an exception. No, Sam had moved straight up to his room and straight into [_Dean Winchester Is a Gay Virgin_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1713740). Untold hours and angst-fueled rage quits later, Sam realized he needed breakfast, but that meant looking at his brother without blushing, and he knew that was an impossibility. Instead, he dove into [_Words With Friends_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790776), which, of course, had only made the problem worse, especially since he was apparently incapable of moving past chapter two.

Sam is honestly starting to chafe.

Dean, however, is well-rested and whistling his way down to the kitchen. If the soft _flop flop_ of his footsteps are to be trusted, Dean's wearing the fluffy slippers that he only wears when he thinks Sam is still asleep. It's just another “hidden” habit that Sam has been accidental witness to over years of sharing space. Sam starts to wonder what else Dean's been hiding—

—and suddenly realizes that Dean's porn folder is on his laptop.

Because _of course_ Dean keeps a folder full of porn on Sam's laptop.

Sam opens it, and seals his fate.

* * *

Dean loves breakfast. He loves making breakfast. He loves smelling breakfast. He especially loves _eating_ breakfast. On the list of Things Dean Loves, breakfast is third, preceded only by Baby (second), Sam (first), and...

Dean hesitates mid flip of a pancake, trying to remember when Sam started sharing the gold medal. The bacon burns in the second pan while he tries to stuff his feelings back in the pie safe of his soul; there's no need to ruin the morning (or the meal, for that matter) with Deep Thoughts. Dean focuses on the third pan instead, scrambling his mind like he scrambles his eggs: with purpose, precision, and a little cheese.

He scrolls through his iPod to [_Aperitif for Destruction_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr7EBuz-2xI) as he puts the cheddar back in the fridge and pulls the bacon back out. Silently, Dean thanks Sam (as he does every morning at the bunker) for always remembering to go grocery shopping, though he isn't exactly sure when he goes or how he gets there. He switches out burnt bacon for raw, switches on the coffeemaker, and, at last, switches off his unpleasant thoughts.

Dean wanders out into the library with his food and sits down; sure, he could eat in the kitchen, but he'd much rather spread out, if for no other reason than there's room and opportunity to do so. There's no case, after all, and thus no need to rush, so he takes his time setting everything up for perfect maximum sprawl. He casually flips back through yesterday's paper again between sips of coffee and bites of pancake, looking for potential local supernatural activity; eventually, he props his feet up on the table, leans back in his chair, and scans the classifieds for ill-worded ads, food long finished. He distantly hears Sam's door open slowly inward with a groan before swinging free and thudding against the frame in the opposite direction, the tremendous bang echoing down the cavernous walls of the bunker. Dean sighs; he's told his brother countless times to oil the hinges so the door is either consistently creaky or stubbornly silent. Swinging both ways never did any good.

 _According to Dad, at least_ , his brain adds helpfully before he can shut it down.

“Morning, Sam!” Dean yells as amiably as possible, lips pursed as he pushes yet another wave of unwanted emotions out into the cold.

“Hrrraughuh?” Sam blearily replies, his voice muffled given the distance between them.

Dean puts down the paper and turns around in his chair, eyebrow raised. “You okay, Sammy?”

“I'm... Fine?” Sam's voice pitches up at the end as he draws out the vowels.

Dean's other eyebrow joins the party. “Positive about that?”

“Yuh... Yuh....”  The yawn escapes at last.  “Um. Yes?”

“Yeah, okay, Rip Van,” Dean replies with a scoff and a shake of his head. “Whatever you say.”

Sam eventually shuffles his way into the library, fingers combing tangles out of his hair as he yawns into his bicep. “I actually haven't been to bed yet,” he says casually as he slips into the chair across from Dean. He rubs the sides of his face with the heels of his hands, the long sleeves of his grey v-neck catching slightly on scruff. “Got... Uh, distracted.”

“By what?”

Sam tilts his head and looks across the room, scratching the side of his throat in an obvious tell. “Oh, you know... The usual.”

“The usual what?” Dean says, punctuating with a toss of his newspaper as he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “No lying. We agreed.”

Sam sighs, and tells as much truth as he dares. “It's a surprise, Dean.”

“A surprise.”

“Yeah.”

“For me.”

“That is what I said, Dean,” replies Sam with an amused twitch of a smile.

Dean remains stone-faced and skeptical. “I _hate_ surprises.”

“You'll like this one.” _Eventually_ , he says to himself.

Dean swings his legs down and pushes himself away from the table with a huff. “There's pancakes in the kitchen. Kept 'em warm in the oven for you.”

“Dean.”

“Just say, 'thank you.'” The dishes rattle in his hands as he cleans up.

“Dean.”

“Ain't supposed to be nothin' hidden between us, but if you can't keep your word, you can at least be grateful for fucking breakfast, yeah?”

“ _Dean_.” They finally see eye to eye. “Thank you for breakfast,” Sam says gently. “And I promise you, no lies.  Just surprise.”

Dean's eyes flicker down and to each side before he looks back up, arms relaxing, dishes settling. “No lies?”

“None.”

A genuine smile spreads across Dean's face. “Okay,” he says, turning to go.

“In that spirit,” begins Sam with a chuckle, “Nice footgear.”

Dean stops in his tracks, and looks down at his fluff-covered feet. “Son of a bitch.”

* * *

Instinctively, Dean hates time off from work.  He likes to keep his feet busy, his hands dirty, his head in the game.  Vacation days make him lazy.  They make him weak.  When there’s no hunt to focus on, he starts hunting other things.

Typically, that means himself.

One of Dean’s most recent downtime discoveries, for instance, is his innate joy for domesticity.  Before the bunker, he’d never made breakfast, unless cracking open a box of Lucky Charms for Sammy and uncapping a gallon of milk counted.  Now, when the brothers are home, Dean cooks three squares, including vegetables, much to Sam’s surprise.  Granted, that surprise had turned to disdain when Sam noticed everything green tasted distinctly of bacon.

“If you add pork to it,” he’d said, snub-nosed, “it’s no longer a vegetable.”

“Yeah, you go tell that to Biggersons, see how far your argument takes you.”  And Sam had pretended not to smile, and pretended not to like his cooking, and Dean had pretended to be offended.

Dean tries very hard not to think about how much more they pretend now than they did when they were kids, now that they have a space of their own to pretend _in_ , a place apart to feel more normal.  He tries harder to ignore the swell of pride in his chest when he feels like he’s finally given Sam a home.  He tries hardest to quell his rage when Sam denies they have one.  More than anything else, however, Dean tries not to wonder whether or not Mary would have approved of his progress at homemaking, never mind his attempts at pie.

He knows his pie will never, ever live up to hers.

Regardless, here he stands in the kitchen, trying to figure out crust.  It keeps his feet busy, surprisingly enough, because he is apparently one of those odd ducks that dances back and forth, toe to toe when he creates, though the constant stream of music might have more to do with that than any genetic proclivity to baker’s ballet.  His hands definitely stay dirty, sticky with cold butter and dusty with flour, dough caked under his fingernails that he picks at absently for hours after.  Dean’s never been happier than when he’s in the kitchen, hunting the secret to the perfect combination of crisp and tender, soft and strong.

Instinctively, Dean hates days off, because being himself makes him weak.

Dean looks at his hands balled into fists and swears, realizing he’s over-kneaded the dough in his mental meandering.  He’s punched it and poked it and prodded it as he stands there, furious with himself for having dough between his fingers in the first place, guilty because he likes this…  This _woman’s work bullshit_ , and now the crust will be tough and coarse and ruined.  Every time he gets to this step, he tells himself to be gentle, to keep calm and settle the dough like one would a screaming child—with a deep breath, smooth hands, and nothing but love.  It worked with Sammy, and with Lisa’s niece, and Bobby John—

He pauses, considering.  It didn’t completely help with Bobby John.  Maybe the crust needs hunter’s helper, too.

—but he just can’t keep his mind on the task at hand.  Making breakfast or burgers is one thing, but here, doing something so utterly Mrs. Cleaver, Dean feels his father glaring disapprovingly over his shoulder.  He stands there, thinking of middle school and the single fucking time that he asked to take home ec; his teeth clench as he remembers the forty fucking times John refused to stop teasing him about asking.  John is a perpetual pie impediment in the bunker kitchen.  Sometimes Dean wonders why his father chose to haunt his thoughts instead of the journal.

He tosses the dough back into his stainless steel mixing bowl and shoves it backwards on the counter so hard that it bounces slightly off the backsplash.  Dean wipes his hands on his apron as he rips it off, wads it up, and tosses it into the bowl as well.  He can clean up the kitchen later, Sam’s complaints of potential ants be damned.  Right now, Dean needs to flip the off switch on his brain as quickly as fucking possible, and that means mental escapism, and _that_ means media.

Dean strides into his room, slamming the door behind him, and considers his options.  He could get caught up on the increasingly unlikely adventures of Dr. Sexy, but he’s not in a mood where he would enjoy it.  He would thumb through his vintage skin mags if he could manage to shake the idea of being watched; once John takes up residence in Dean’s shadow, it’s difficult to exorcise him.  He could read—

Yeah.   _Yeah_ , he could _read_.  He’s not driving or duping or dying.  Reading is definitely an option.

Dean rummages through his bag and pulls out a battered, dog-eared, coverless copy of [_On the Road_](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/117450818099/click-here-to-automatically-download-a-free-pdf-of).  He leaps sideways onto the bed, landing with a bounce and a grin, and settles back into the pillows.  Pulling out the ticket-stub-turned-bookmark, Dean opens it carefully to his favorite part.

He blinks.

He turns the book over in his hands to make sure it’s the right one.  It is.

He stares at the page again and, as his curiosity gets the better of him, as it is prone to doing, and he begins to read:

 

> The crowd cheers a little louder than before, and Castiel walks across the stage. Before he makes it to the mic, Ruby Red pulls him into a big hug and whispers something in his ear before quickly gliding away.
> 
> Castiel, Dean notes, is wearing an outfit he has never seen before. That is to say, none of it is Dean’s, which is odd, because a Venn diagram of their wardrobes is pretty much a circle.
> 
> He’s wearing his usual black dress shoes, with dark-wash skinny jeans, a form-fitting white v-neck t-shirt, and a yellow-checkered flannel overshirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair looks like it always does, but Dean is close enough that he can tell there’s product in it, making it look intentionally messy instead of the just-had-sex-hair Cas just naturally, kind of… has.
> 
> And glasses. Castiel, whose vision not six months prior went beyond the physical realm, is wearing glasses.
> 
> And he is really fucking hot.
> 
> Cas sets two books down on the barstool next to him and lowers the mic so that it’s in front of his mouth.
> 
> For a moment, he scans the audience, eyes finally landing on Dean, and smiles. Then he picks up one of the books on the stool and opens it, clearing his throat.
> 
> “Good evening,” Cas begins. “My name is Castiel Winchester, and Ruby Red has graciously allowed me to share some poetry with you this evening.” He shifts anxiously, and clears his throat again. “The first piece I’d like to read is an excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s ‘[Howl](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381),’ followed by one of my own works.”

This is Dean’s book.   _Someone_ has _fiddled_ with _Dean’s book_.  Not a borrowed text, but _his_ , and there are so few things in life that he can truly call his own to begin with.  No, this is stronger than fiddling—someone has _violated_ Dean’s book.

To Dean’s surprise, he’s actually not as pissed off as he wants to be.  Cas _does_ sound really fucking hot.  Okay, maybe Dean is a little weirded out by the fact that someone has filled his book with paper-clipped inserts about him and Cas and not, say, Chris Evans and—

Wait.

Castiel _Winchester_?  Sir Serious Angel Business _Winchester_?  Mister Never Let Myself Think About You in the Shower _Winchester_?

Dean bites his tongue and politely asks his brain to shut the hell up.

He flips the page.

 

> Near the middle of the poem, Castiel stops, and stares up from his book and directly into Dean’s eyes, while speaking the next line of the poem gently, caressing every word:
> 
> “'Who went whoring through Colorado in the myriad of stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too…'”
> 
> It is an intoxicating sight to behold, and the imagery of a world neither of them could ever really know—yet has somehow managed to connect them—floods Dean’s mind as Castiel speaks.

Dean is absolutely, one-hundred-percent _not_ picturing Cas quoting him poetry.  That isn’t even close to what’s going on in his mind’s eye.  No, no, Dean can’t picture Cas quoting him poetry because Cas would obviously be behind him, hissing “Howl” into his ear in a lust-filled rumble as he writhes beneath the angel, pinned and begging and—

Dean leaps off the bed, book in hand.  He throws open his bedroom door and jogs up the hallway toward his brother’s room.  The only warning Sam gets to his impending visitor is his own bedroom door flying open so quickly that it has no time to bounce back out into the hallway.

"The fuck did you do to [_On the Road_](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/117450818099/click-here-to-automatically-download-a-free-pdf-of), Sammy?"

Sam is scrambling, turning over piles of stapled pages in an attempt to hide evidence while maintaining nonchalance.  His hair is sticking up in various places; bags hang underneath eyes exhausted from over-reading.  He’s still wearing his long-sleeve shirt, but the sweatpants are gone, leaving only boxers in their wake.

“What?” he replies.

“My book, Sam.”  Dean thrusts the book into Sam’s face.  With trepidation, Sam takes it from him.

“Yes, this is your book.  Likewise,” Sam says, gesturing toward his doorway, “that is my bedroom door, and we’ve had the, ‘please knock,’ conversation at least once this week already.”

“Well you’ve been in my room messing with my stuff, so fuck your door.”

Sam sputters.  “What did _I_ do?  I’ve been in here all day!”

Dean rolls his eyes up, looking left and right, racking his brain for new options.  “...Kevin?”

“No, I just spoke with Linda a few days ago.  He’s grumpy, but very definitely with her.”  Sam scrunches up his nose.  “Why would you think I’d tear a cover off of a book?  Or Kevin?  We’re the last two people who would damage a book, Dean.”

“Nah, the cover fell off a decade ago.”  Dean turns the book over reverently in his hands, eyes fond as he scans over yellowed pages.  “I mean the stuff that got paper-clipped into it.”

Sam frowns, then motions for Dean to give him the book.  He opens it to the indicated section, and his eyebrows jump to his hairline.  “I, uh…”

“What, did you do it?”

“Uh…”  Sam races through his recent memory.  This _was_ the section he was going to give to Dean, but he hadn’t decided how to present it to him yet.  At least, he’s fairly certain he hadn’t decided.  It’s been a long night—for all he knows at this point, having saturated his brain in fictional kink, he did put the excerpt from [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634) in [_On the Road_](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/117450818099/click-here-to-automatically-download-a-free-pdf-of).  Sam decides to own up to it, because it does sound like something he would do to prank Dean.  Granted, he would have rather covered the outside in apoxy so that it stuck to Dean’s hands, but this is good enough.  “Yeah, uh, sorry, Dean.  I thought you were talking about the aesthetic damage,” he explains, shaking the book a little.

“What the hell do painkillers have to do with it?”

“That’s anaesthetics, Dean.”  Sam hands the book back to his brother.  “But did you enjoy what you read?”

Dean shifts on his feet, a hand moving up to absentmindedly tug at his collar.  “Yeah,” he finally says, “but you stuck it in the middle of my favorite part.”

“But you enjoyed it?”

“Yeah, Sam, I enjoyed it, okay?”

Sam smiles and leans back in his chair.  “Congratulations!  You have now read and enjoyed something I found in a fanfic.”

“There’s beat poetry readings in fanfic?”

“It’s called [_Sex 101, or: That Time Castiel Asked Dean to Teach Him How to Have Sex_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634).”

Dean shakes his head, eyes closed, incredulous.  “There’re stories about me teaching Cas how to fuck?”

“I took the liberty of printing it out for you.”  Sam fishes the print-out from the floor where he’d knocked it off.  He waves it with a flourish at Dean who, shell-shocked, accepts it without noticing.  Sam spins himself around to face his desk again.  “Read it carefully.  There will be a quiz.”

“I ain’t reading any of that…  That Cassady or Diesel or whatever the hell it’s called.”

“Aren’t you curious?” Sam asks over his shoulder.

Dean scowls.  “This is a shitty prank.”

“You’re welcome.”  Sam hears his brother grumble an assent, complaining under his breath as he turns to shuffle out of the room.  “Hey, wait, Dean?”

“Hmm?”

“Your favorite part is Sabinal?” Sam asks, craning back around in his seat.

Dean shrugs, smiles, and slaps Sam on the shoulder with a wink.  “Mañana, little brother,” he says.  “It’s all about making it to mañana.”

* * *

Sam doesn’t sleep.  Instead, he finishes [_Words With Friends_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790776) (for the fourth, maybe fifth time, but Sam stopped counting), and [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850), and [_Coffee & Donuts_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844), and [_Entrelacé_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3091439).  Sam knows he must look like some unfortunate freshman who, between senior year and the start of college, forgot time management and self-discipline and has a final in five minutes, because that’s exactly what he _feels_ like.

Yawning, he collects the fics he’s finished, and opens his door.

“Evening, Sam,” calls Dean from the kitchen as said door slams into the wall.  Sam slumps, rubbing his eyes with his free hand as he makes his way Deanward.  In the kitchen, Dean’s sitting at the table in his bathrobe, [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634) in one corner, an empty bowl in another, nose buried in [_On the Road_](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/117450818099/click-here-to-automatically-download-a-free-pdf-of).

“So?” Sam asks as he lays the fanfics on the counter and opens the lid of the stock pot.

“So what?”

“So how did you like it?”  Sam brings the ladle to his nose and sniffs carefully.  “Also what is this?”

“So I couldn’t finish it,” replies Dean, marking his place with his thumb and folding his arms across his chest.  “And it was supposed to be chicken noodle soup, because you look like shit.”

“Chicken noodle soup doesn’t have bacon, Dean.”

“I was experimenting, asshole.”  Dean bites his lip, then adds, “Plus there wasn’t any chicken.”

“You could’ve gone to the store.”

“That’s your job.  You stock the fridge, I empty it into delicious meals.”

Sam turns to look at him, empty bowl in hand.  “I thought you did the grocery runs.”

Dean runs his bookless hand down his face and groans.  “Figures the Men of Letters would have a goddamn magic refrigerator.”

“Without magic chicken?”

“Just shut up and eat your bacon noodle.”

Sam finishes dishing himself his questionable dinner and sits across from Dean.  He gestures at [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634) with his spoon.  “Why couldn’t you finish it?”

“I…”  Dean suddenly gets up from the table, collecting his bowl and heading to the sink.  “I don’t know,” he answers with his back turned.

“Come on, Dean.  Talk to me.  I'm your brother.  It's what I'm here for.”  Sam grins, turns in his chair, and suggests,  “Let's crack open a beer and have a BM scene.”

“That sounds so wrong,” Dean replies.  “Do we even have beer?”

“I don’t know,” Sam sighs as he turns back to stare down his soup.  “Why don’t you ask the magic fridge?”  He hears the refrigerator groan, and a distinct sound of triumph.  Dean sets a cold, open bottle in front of Sam before retrieving and opening his own.  “Anyway, why can’t you read it?”  Dean settles back into his chair, mumbling under his breath, eyes focused on the beer in his hand.  “What?”

“I always wanted to dance, okay?” he blurts out, setting his beer down without even taking the first sip.  “Dad wouldn’t let me.”  Dean can’t meet Sam’s eyes as he cracks his knuckles.  “Said it would make me soft.”

Sam chuckles softly.  “Dean, you being interested in dance is hardly a secret.”

“Wha—But how did you—”

“I’ve caught you changing the channel on musical theatre more than I've caught you jerking off to busty Asians on my computer.  Not to mention the incident with the toe shoes."  Sam finally takes a sip of his soup.  “Did you like the writing, though?”

“Yeah,” Dean says as he picks his beer back up and takes a long drink.  “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Then try something else she’s written.”

Dean suddenly reaches over and puts a hand over Sam’s soup bowl, blocking his spoon.  “Why are you pushing this, Sam?” he asks as Sam looks up.

“Because,” Sam says, shooing Dean’s hand away from the bowl, “of all the things you’ve faced, you’ve never faced yourself.”

Dean smiles and leans back in his chair.  “Actually—”

“ _You know what I mean_.”  Sam stops, spoon poised above his bacon noodle.  “Consider this a character study.  See yourself from someone else’s perspective for a change.  Learn something new about yourself, something that only a third party could understand.”

His brother turns his eyes to the ceiling.  “If I read another story, will you drop it?”

“I will drop it if you read something else _to completion_.  And then we're going to talk about your feelings, and you will like it.”

“C’mon, Sam!”  Dean stomps his feet a bit under the table, the action muffled by his slippers.  “This is stupid.  What the fuck could some fan of that ill-written farce of a series know about Dean Winchester that Dean Winchester doesn’t already know?”

“You’ll never find out if you don’t read, now will you?”

Dean exhales loudly in frustration.  “Have I told you lately that I hate you?”

“No, I haven’t been near you enough to influence you with my logic today.”  Dean gets up from the table, waving a hand at him like he’s batting away a particularly pesky insect.  “Your homework’s on the counter.  Oh, and Dean?”

“What now, queen bee?”

Sam points to the soup with his spoon.  “This is actually pretty good.”

“Oh.”  Dean straightens up, looking vaguely pleased.  “You’re not just saying that to get me to read these, are you?”

“No, I’m not.  And you even put vegetables in it.”

“It’s a ‘meer-pwah’,” he replies, over-pronouncing the word, “and it’s a foundational ingredient.”  Dean smiles, wide and sincere.  “Doesn’t count as rabbit food because it’s a base.”

Sam startles, shocked.  “You know what a mirepoix is?”

“Don’t gotta be Julia Child to learn fancy cooking terminology,” replies Dean with an air of superiority.  “And don’t snub-nose me, I know I can’t pronounce for shit.”

Sam holds up his hands in apology.  “ _Mea culpa_.”

“Whatever, Poindexter,” Dean mockingly scoffs as he scoops up the stack of papers and heads out of the kitchen.  “See how many carrots you get to balance your bacon next time.”

Sam laughs as he tucks back into his soup.

* * *

Two gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“You’re already losing control of the story,” the Sage accuses.  “Sam noticed the refrigerator.  You almost lost him with the book.  I mean, you forgot to have him cut out the excerpt and put it in [_On the Road_](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/117450818099/click-here-to-automatically-download-a-free-pdf-of).  What even, Cee?”

The Conductor shrugs, arms wide and exasperated.

“Your arms can’t be exasperated!  Arms don’t have feelings.  That doesn’t even work.”  The Sage rests her head in her hands, heels pressed against her eyes.  “You’ve got to stop writing when you’re sleep deprived.  You’re losing important details.”  She waits for a response.  When she doesn’t get one, she uncovers one eye.  “Sorry, I forgot you can’t talk.”

“-- -------,” says the Conductor.

“Why is that anyway?”

“-- --- ---- -- --- -----------.”

“What, like Ariel in _The Little Mermaid_?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic once.

“Interesting.”

“---,” the Conductor replies, “--- ---- ------ --------.”

“It is going to start bugging your readers.”

The Conductor shrugs, a smaller, more sheepish motion this time.

“It’ll be okay,” the Sage reassures them.  “You really do need to be more careful, though.  I mean, they discussed the grocery situation.  Sooner or later, if you don’t play this right, one of them is going to figure out the Game.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic once.

The Sage grabs her laptop and leans in.  Her hood falls off completely in her concerned rush.  “Cee, you know what happens if…  If _that_ happens.  You know what’s at stake here.”  She runs a hand through her red undercut and sighs.  “I mean, I know we’d give anything for canon Destiel, but that’s too high a price.”

“--- -- --’- --- ---- ---?”

“You can’t cheat the Queen.  No one cheats the Queen, not even the King.  Never mind that he’s probably _expecting_ you to cheat.”

“-- --- ------- --- ------- -----------!”

“Monty Python quotes won’t save you if the Queen shows up!” hisses the Sage.

The Conductor considers this.

“Well consider harder, cookie.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger-warning for reference to Cas' death in 9x03.

Since last night, Dean has reorganized the pantry, taken a toothbrush to all the grout in the kitchen, and planned meals for the next two weeks, hunts permitting.  He’s cleaned his guns nine times.  He’s sharpened all of his knives, from boot-held to butcher’s block.  He even stole Sam’s computer and looked up where the fuck the word “doily” came from, because he’d found a pack in the stuck kitchen drawer.  He may or may not have spent a good seventy minutes unsticking it, searching desperately for something, _anything_ to do.

Dean now knows that Doiley was a 17th century London draper who, for some godforsaken reason, decided that creating ornamental napkins was his life’s work.  Dean also knows that there is no amount of targets he can shoot to make himself forget that he was curious about the origins of lacy paper mats.  Now that he’s been awake for almost an hour, having gotten his requisite four hours of broken sleep, he knows that spinach quiche, while tasty, is no substitute for waffles.  He pokes the fluffy eggs with his fork a few times, biting the corner of his bottom lip.  His eyebrows scrunch together before he finally gives up pretending that he’s interested and, with a huff, tosses the fork onto the plate.

It doesn’t matter what he’s accomplished or learned in his most recent half-day.  [ _Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) continues to stare him down—waiting, watching—and it shows no signs of blinking.  Dean had finished the first chapter easily enough; he’d made decent progress into the second before he needed to put it down.  Perhaps if he’d read it three or four years earlier, he would have found it traumatic, felt the words slice too close to the edge of real.  He’s had time to heal now, and, while his decades in hell still haunt him, the pain he felt and the guilt he feels for the dead he tortured is more subdued.  After all, Dean’s done so much worse to the living now; at least the souls in hell had signed up for torment.  Still, though, the image of blood pooling and growing at his feet coupled with the necessity of touch to remind him he wasn’t a monster...

He rubs at the Mark through the arm of his bathrobe, trying to scratch an itch that cannot be reached by hands alone.

No, the first chapter hadn’t triggered him the way he had expected it to when he’d flipped it open.  Instead of hell, all he could think of was Cas.

Cas, backing him up against the counter in Bobby’s kitchen, face a breath away from his when he’d threatened to throw him back into the pit.

Cas, backing him up into the wall of heaven’s waiting room, hand warm and sure against his face, eyes begging for trust.

Cas, very forcefully backing him up into a brick wall in a dirty alley, all pummeled and pleading and penitent and _pitiful_ in the wake of his angel, snarling, spitting mad.

Cas, backing him up, but never backing down.

And then Cas, bound and bleeding in a reaper’s chair, human and broken and _dead_ —

The Mark of Cain sings beneath his skin.   **Avenge** , it says.   **Right the wrong at the root of the problem.  Dig out the maggots and filth of the earth. Salt and burn them.**

**They all hurt you.  There are no victims.  They all are monsters sooner or later.**

**So kill them all.**

The chorus is catchy and getting harder to ignore.  Dean digs his nails into his arm, bites the inside of his cheek, repeatedly stubs his toe against the leg of the table.  Something, _anything_ to do.  The music of murder mingles with his blood and flows through his veins and he knows it’s going to be one of those days where—

“Morning, Dean,” Sam says with a smile as he stretches and yawns his way into the kitchen.  The siren song in Dean’s soul skitters to a halt, and he can finally breathe again.

“Mhmm,” he manages to grit out in reply.

Sam’s grin falls, and he turns from dishing out quiche to look at his brother.  “You okay?”

Dean opens his mouth to lie, but shakes his head and thinks better.  “No.  It’s…”  He averts his eyes and gestures haltingly at the Mark.  “I think I’ve got a handle on it, and then _bam_.  It just…  Shows up.  Interrupts my train of thought.  Everything eventually turns into death, man.”

“Even doilies?” Sam says, eyebrows raised and smile slowly returning.

“Shut up,” Dean replies, appreciating the deliberate subject change.  He picks his fork back up and returns to pushing his breakfast around his plate, trying to mesmerize himself in the movement.  Sam sits down across from him eventually, and pushes over something that looks suspiciously like—

“Where the hell did you get powdered donuts?”

“I keep a bag hidden,” Sam says.  He takes a bite of quiche, swallows, and continues, “You know, for when you have a bad day.  And you’re having a bad day.”

Cain’s song filters to the bottom of Dean’s internal playlist.  “That’s…”  He grins finally, and tears into the bag.  “Thanks, Sam,” and then adds, around a bite of donut, “Tha’sh real nishe of ‘oo.”

Sam grimaces.  “Why do I give you food?”

Dean pops the rest of the tiny sugary donut in his mouth, shrugs, and pulls out another.

“This, though,” Sam says, spearing another bite of spinach and egg and cheese, “This is fantastic quiche.”

“Gree Esh ‘n ‘amlesh,” corrects Dean.

“What?”

After a mouthful of coffee, Dean more clearly repeats, “Green Eggs and Hamless.  That’s what I’m calling it.”

Sam leans back in his chair, one corner of his mouth twitching up in shock and disbelief.  “You actually cooked something without bacon.”

“Yup, and it’s all yours.”  Dean licks the powdered sugar off of the fingers of one hand while digging around in the bag with the other.  “And you better enjoy it because everything else I make today is gonna be covered in bacon.”

Sam rolls his eyes, but knows better than to fight.  Instead, he asks, “How’s the fanfic?”

Dean takes a turn at the eye rolling and says nothing.

“You haven’t even opened it, have you?” Sam asks.

“I did, okay?”  He sets a half-eaten donut down on the table next to his coffee mug.  “I did, and it’s fucking fantastic, but I had to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because it…”  Dean averts his eyes, lacing his fingers together just shy of nervous hand-wringing.  “It made me think about the past.  Not just hell, either, I mean _everything_. Pre-, mid-, post-apocalypse, take your damn pick, I’ve been playing it on the highlight reel.”

Sam covers his brother’s hands with his own.  His grip is solid, grounding.  It reminds him of John—no, it reminds him of _Dad_ , how he reassured him in the first few years after the fire, before the life finally snuffed the light out of John’s eyes and Dean was deemed old enough to learn the new family trade.  Some days, Dean wishes he’d stayed mute and never spoken up again.

Dean clinches his jaw as the Mark pulses.

“I’m sorry, Dean.”  Sam squeezes his hands.  “I didn’t think about it sending you back to hell.  You just asked me for a—”

“—a helluva monster hunt,” Dean finishes with a faked smirk.  “And it is that so far, but there’s…  There’s a lot more than that, and I wasn’t prepared for it.”

Sam removes his hands and asks cautiously, “So you aren’t going to finish it?”

Dean opens his mouth, then closes it just as quickly.  He wants to finish it.  He really, really does.  God help him, assuming God’s listening, he wants to read about the Further Adventures of Dean & Cas.  “Yeah,” he finally concedes, “but…  Well.”

“You know,” Sam says, “I could sit here with you while you read.  Then you could just talk to me whenever something came up that made you feel…”  He hesitates, risking a glance to the Mark like it can see him looking.

“Off?” Dean offers.  “Stabby?  Fighty?  Killy?”

“No.”  Sam’s lips draw a thin, sad line across his face.  “Just made you feel anything, really.  I mean,” he continues, cutting off Dean’s annoyed response, “it’s just that you bottle everything up so tightly.  You play all your cards close to the chest.  And then when you do let yourself feel or react in any way that isn’t comical or macho or sexually-driven, you fall apart.”

“And we can’t risk me falling apart,” Dean replies tightly.

Sam nods.  “It wasn’t healthy before, but now?  Now it’s a public safety hazard waiting to happen.”

Dean brushes the powder off of the half-moon donut on the table, pressing the pad of his finger into the finely ground sugar.  He concentrates on how soft it feels.  He thinks about how different it is to other similar substances, like cornstarch or baking soda.  He runs through a list of desserts in his head that are heightened by the application of powdered sugar.

Something.

_Anything._

The Mark resonates at a lower and lower frequency until, at last, it drops out of audible range.

“You’d do that?” he asks as Sam scrapes the last crumbs of egg off of his plate.  “You’d sit here with me while I read and help me deal with my bullshit?”

Sam sets down his fork and levels his best, _“I’m your brother, you asshole, of course I would,”_ bitchface at Dean.

Dean laughs out his acceptance, picks up the print-out, and cracks it open to chapter two.  Sam clears the table and pads over, first to the sink to wash up, then to the coffeemaker.  He measures out the grounds imperfectly; the coffee will be too strong, too much like the overnight remnants of greasy gas stations, but it’s the only way Dean drinks it.  

Sam pauses over the filter, his grip firm on the measuring scoop, and wonders at the sheer marriedness that is their life, living out of each other’s pockets and loving like fools while they lie and cheat and fumble their words.  He’s never really thought about it before, but life with Dean isn’t entirely dissimilar to his life with Amelia.  That should bother him much more than it does—of that fact, if nothing else, he is certain.

_God, no wonder we get offered the single king at haunted B &Bs,_ it dawns on him.   _We reek of dysfunctional couple._

“Sam?”

He shakes himself from his reverie, and finishes setting up the pot.  “Dean?”

“Don’t people feel, y’know…”  Dean attempts to use his eyebrows to communicate, one hand full of fanfic, the other gripping a coffee mug.  It rather looks to Sam as though his brother’s brow is attempting lift-off, but he’d never point it out.  Dean has a difficult enough time talking as it is, even when he is free to gesticulate.  If Dean wanted to emphasize his speech by wiggling his ears, Sam would support him.

“What?” he asks, suppressing every sinew of snark in his tongue.

Dean’s eyebrows settle to a respectable resting place.  “Don’t people feel uncomfortable reading this stuff?”

“Why?”  The pot percolates and steams behind him as he leans back against the counter.  “People read smut all the time.  Just ask Fabio.”

Dean laughs, once, short and breathy.  “Yeah, yeah,” he says, “I get that, but…”  He quickly licks his lips in concentration, sucking in the bottom one with the last dart of his tongue, pulling it into his mouth.  His teeth barely graze against it in an absentminded caress.  The lip reemerges just the slightest bit plumper than before, a shade more pink, shinier with spit.

Not that Sam notices or anything.

“But what?” Sam manages to wheeze out.

“Isn’t this like an—an—”  Dean leans over the table to finish in a conspiratorial whisper.  “An _interspecies_ kind of thing?”

Sam certainly doesn’t notice Dean’s bare chest beneath the navy blue bathrobe.  His eyes are not drawn like a magnet to the anti-possession tattoo.  He does not watch it rise and fall with Dean’s breath.

He doesn’t, he doesn’t, _he doesn’t._

“Sam?”

“Oh!  Uh.”   _Pull it together, Sam!  Context clues!  Chest, robe, whisper, lean, table, cause?  Cause.  Cause!_  “Interspecies!  Right.  Right.”   _Well done, Sam._  “How do you figure?” he asks, turning around to the coffee pot again.   _For coffee.  Not because Dean is distracting.  Why would Dean be distracting?  Dean is always distracting, especially when he’s—  Oh Goddammit._

“Well,” begins Dean, oblivious to Sam’s internal nuclear meltdown, “Cas isn’t human, and I am.”

“If we’re being honest,” Sam replies, cordoning off Chernobyl-sized portions of his psyche with giant red flags, “you both have a certain…  Species fluidity.”  He wraps the last wayward thought with caution tape and shoves it into the evidence locker.  “Why?” he manages to ask with carefully-practiced nonchalance as he pours a cup of coffee.  “Does it bother you?”

“I mean, kinda?”  Dean tosses the fanfic in front of him and uses his newly-freed hand to ruffle his hair, distinctly uncomfortable.  “It’s just, um, weird.”  He relinquishes his mug and scratches behind his ear, eyes darting over into the corner.  “ _Wrong._ ” Dean adds after a long pause.  “Definitely, definitely wrong.”

Sam sighs as he empties a third packet of Splenda into his cup.  “You’re so full of shit,” he mumbles, looking for a spoon.

“Yet you’re the one with brown eyes.”

“Hazel,” Sam corrects, retaking his seat at the table.

Dean shrugs.  “So then you’re less constipated today.”

Sam sets down his cup with slightly more force than necessary.  His lips are drawn into a thin line between two dimpled cheeks.  His brow creases; his eyes narrow; his nostrils flare slightly.

“Woo!” cheers Dean, throwing his hands in the air.  “Houston, we have bitchface!”

Sam rolls his eyes and searches for God across the ceiling.

“You’re too wide of a target.  You don’t wanna be teased, don’t be so easy.”

“Oh that is _rich_ coming from you.”

Dean whistles lowly, closing his eyes and putting his hand over his heart.  “And his bite is just as ferocious!”

“ _Star Trek_ , Dean.  You watch _Star Trek_.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you have no room to judge the pairing because you watch _Star Trek_ , which is literally the _Days of Our Lives_ of interspecies romance.”

Dean scowls.  “Language, Sam.  There’s no need to make this personal.   _Star Trek_ didn’t do shit to you.”

“But you see my point, at least?  I mean, there’s pot calling the kettle black, and then there’s fandom one calling fandom two kinky.  It’s a pointless argument.”

“So that’s akin to…”  Dean takes a long sip of his coffee, the thumb of his left hand repetitively flipping the corner of [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) as he considers his analogous options.  ”A pour-over yelling at itself in the reflective surface of a toaster?”

“Stay on target, Dean.”

“Besides,” Dean continues, catching each individual page with the tip of his thumbnail, “there’s a lot of human-on-human in _Star Trek_.  Boldly going does not mean you send the shuttlecraft everywhere.”

“Do not even try to pretend you don't ascribe to the Jack Harkness position on sex with aliens.  I've seen your cartoon porn."   _And lived to tell the tale_ , Sam silently adds.  Across the table, Dean has suddenly found the hem of his bathrobe very interesting.  “Don’t pretend you’re embarrassed, either, Dean, I know better.”

“Then you know it’s called hentai,” he says, straightening up and grabbing the bag of donuts again.  He reopens it, then stops, noticeably replaying the last few lines of conversation in his head in a silent, subdued dramatic reenactment.  Dean sets the bag back down.  “What were you doing in my porn folder, Sam?”

“Educating myself.”

“It's labeled, 'Seriously, Sam, turn away now.'"

"Yeah, and it's in a subfolder labeled, 'For fuck's sake, Sam, find your own porn.'"

“And you still looked?” Dean asks the ceiling in exasperation.

Sam shrugs and has the decency to look contrite.  “It is on my computer, Dean.”

“Boundaries crossed, man,” Dean says with a slow shake of his head.  “Not cool.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam tells his coffee.  He had known he shouldn’t—it was one of those road rules they’d always agreed on.   _“Leave each other’s porn alone,”_ was immediately preceded by, _“Don’t share hair products,”_ and followed, in turn, with, _“Underwear is sacred.”_  But Sam had been curious, been struck by an absolute _need_ to know if Dean was as kinky as his fictional counterpart.

As it turned out, he definitely, certainly, undoubtedly was.  Perhaps even more so.

Dean exhales tiredly as he scratches the corner of his eye.  “Just don’t do it again, alright.”

“Alright.”  Sam laughs quietly.  “Feel like I’m apologizing a lot lately.”  He sneaks a look at Dean, who is diving back into the bag of donuts in an agitated search for comfort.  “Dean?”

“Uh-hmm?” Dean grumbles around a crumbly mouthful of yeast and sugar.

“You know I’m not judging you, right?  That I’m not going to… I don’t know, kink shame you or whatever?”

Dean uncrosses his legs, scuffing his foot against the floor as he straightens up in his seat.  “Look, I know you’re, like, the liberalist tree fucker on the planet—”

“Hugger.  Tree _hugger_.”

“Sure, whatever.  Point is, you’re a coital communist, I know you ain’t judging.”  Dean thumbs a bit of donut off of his lip and finally looks over at Sam.  “I just don’t want my little brother thinking about me doing those things, y’know?”

Sam should win awards for how well he suppresses the bubble of hysterical laughter that threatens to flee his throat.

“No matter how you lean in matters of the libido,” Dean continues, “you can’t help but look at someone different when you know what they wank to.  What they, uh.”  Sam sees the beginnings of a blush creep up Dean’s neck, a prominent sunburned tinge to his ears.  He swallows and finishes, “What they fantasize about.”

Sam nods and makes a noncommittal noise.  Oscars, Tonys, fucking _Peabodies_ —he deserves them all at this point.  He pushes himself away from the table and goes to refill his cup.

The coffee pot won’t care about having to stare at his hard on, after all.

“Regardless,” Sam says, reseating his newly-collected self following some surreptitious deep breathing and uncomfortable mental imagery (he was going to crawl in a hole and die if he ever saw Garth and that hand puppet again), “you can't keep a file devoted to trysts with tentacles, then look at me with a straight face and tell me that male angel/male human sexy times bother you."

Dean pauses mid bite with a grin.  “I could do that with a straight face.”

“Your face is anything but straight if your porn is to be believed.”

“Yeah?  Well…”  Dean searches for a comeback, finds nothing, and pops the entire tiny pastry into his mouth in defeat.  “Shuh uhp.”

“Not to mention Anna.”  Sam reaches over to the counter from his chair, grabbing and then dumping a handful of sweetener packets on the table.  “Or did the species divergence not bug you when you were getting your rocks off with her in the backseat of the car?”

Dean splutters through a sip of coffee, apparently considering the situation for the first time.  He eventually decides that, “She wasn’t an angel at the time.  Doesn’t count.”

“What about Crowley?”

“I was a demon.  Also we didn’t have sex.”

Sam slumps in relief.  “Thank fucking God.”

“Don’t I fucking know it,” hums Dean in assent.

“What about the Impala?”

Dean’s next sip doesn’t survive.  “The _fuck_ , Sam?”

“Just checking,” Sam cheekily assures him, turning to the counter again to fetch the dishtowel.  “I mean you tryst there so often.  You call her Baby.  Hell, you actually _call_ her the morning after.”

“She’s special,” explains Dean, accepting the towel and mopping up the coffee.  “She’s home.  They’re not.”

“I thought it was more of a TARDIS-type situation.”

Dean blinks.

“You’re bigger on the inside.”

“No, _you_ are,” Dean immediately snaps back.  “Wait.  Wait, no, that doesn’t work.”

“I bet you show your sonic screwdriver to all the companions.”

“This is officially both the nerdiest and most uncomfortable conversation I have ever been forced to have with you.  Kudos.”

Sam pokes Dean’s shin with his toe and smirks.  “Any Time Agents with astounding hair I don’t know about you bedding, Doctor Whochester?”

If Dean wasn’t blushing before, he sure as shit is now.  “No,” he mumbles, and Sam decides it’s absolutely the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

“Well,” he says, downing the rest of his coffee too quickly to be comfortable but fast enough to burn the realization that he found Dean adorable away, “do let me know if that changes.  I’m going to go grab my laptop.”  Sam throws away his trash and sets the mug in the sink.  The fanfiction is calling his name, and he must heed its spell.

“So that’s it?” Dean asks as he heads out the door.

Sam pokes his head back through the frame.  “What’s it?”

“You saw my porn.”

“I did.”

Dean frowns.  “So then you know I like dudes,” he reminds Sam.

Sam rolls his eyes and grins, relieved that Dean, for the moment, isn’t bringing up anything else regarding the content of his porn folder.  “I already knew that.”

“How?” asks Dean, confused.

“I have eyes, Dean, and you are incapable of discretion.  I mean, there was Aaron Bass, for one.”

“That turned out to be a red earring.”

“Herring,” Sam sighs as he walks back over to the table, “and that’s not the point.  You called him your ‘gay thing.’  And you probably blanched and got awkward and knocked things over trying to run away from the possibility of another man flirting with you.”

Dean mumbles something about Sam not being there but always being right.

“And,” Sam continues, “there was that policeman you flirted with.”

“I was drunk!”

“Still, amazingly enough, _not the point._  After that was Nick.”

“Who?”

“Your siren, remember?”

Dean exhales tiredly.  “That was because I wanted a caring brother figure in my life.”

Sam tries desperately not to let that statement get dirty, and tries to feel guilty, instead.

He fails miserably.

“You and I both know that’s a lie,” Sam accuses him.  “We agreed not to lie.”

Dean chews the inside of his cheek and looks at the ceiling with a sideways nod.

“And then there was that magically de-aged guy whose dick you decided to stare at.”  Sam watches as his brother suddenly looks more like a deer than Bambi ever could.  “Do I even need to bring up Dr. Sexy?”

Dean shakes his head and watches his fingers drum against the tabletop.

“Look,” begins Sam, “the point I’m trying to make here is that I’ve _always_ known you liked looking at guys, and I’ve never thought less of you for it.  Not once.”

That gets a tiny smile from Dean.  Sam gives a friendly punch to his shoulder as he heads back out of the room.

“But...”

Or not.  “Yeah?”

“...We’re cool?” he asks shyly, glancing up from his hands.

Sam nods.  “We’re cool.”

“Cool,” Dean says, obviously perking up.

“Now read your fanfic,” reminds Sam as he finally walks down the hallway.

***

Two gather at lunch, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“You do realize how absolutely ridiculous this is, right?” asks the Sage.

The Conductor flicks their Bic once.

“I mean, we’re sitting here, editing this ode to fandom fandom,” Sage says, gesturing at the numerous open tabs in Google Docs, “except that we’ve already edited it, because it’s written here and _I’m looking at the words saying that we’re currently editing it._  The term, ‘mindfuck?’  That does not _even_ begin to cover this.”

The Conductor raises a hand into the air to interject.

“And I know to interject your interjection here because the script tells me that I already have.  I mean, I appreciate plot as much as you do, but this is starting to make my brain hurt.”

The Conductor says nothing, with Bic or otherwise.

The Sage closes her eyes and regroups.  “I just want you to be fully aware that we are commenting _on_ a fic wherein we are both characters _in_ the fic who are controlling characters _within_ a fic that are reading about characters that I _wrote_ into a fic.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic once.

“This is insane.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic once and holds it for a solid minute.

“You exaggerated,” the Sage says, her eyes narrowed.  “That wasn’t even close to a minute.”

“-- ------ -- ---,” the Conductor insists.  “-- ---- -- ----- -----.”

“Just because you say so doesn’t mean it happened that way!”

“--------, -- ----.”

The Sage groans.  “You are the reason DMs are stingy giving out magical artifacts.  You can’t power-game this, Cee.  There’s more at stake than a random encounter.  This is, like, final combat levels of crazy.  You need a strategy.”

“- ---- -- -------.”

“Yeah, one that’s in a constant state of flux because you keep writing more into chapters than you originally planned!  Meanwhile, I’m stuck sitting here, trying to keep all the plot from spiralling out of control, ensuring that the Collective stays in the dark, watching your subtext and—”  The Sage pauses.

“----?”

“This must be what it’s like to be the No Homo Intern.”

“--- -- ---- - --- ---------.”

“I can’t even comment about _not_ being a fellow fan construct because you haven’t written in my comments yet.”  The Sage drops her head into her hands in frustration.  “It’s like you’re writing from every point in the timeline.”

The Conductor shrugs, then adds, “- ---- -- --, ---------.”

“Can we just skip forward to next week and the fifth chapter then, please?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate to do this, but I'm going to be taking a two or three week hiatus after this chapter for several reasons. First, there are Real Life things I have to take care of, like cleaning my house and unpacking from where I moved. Second, I have a few ficlets I'd like to devote some brainspace to. Third, my limited writing time is going to become even _more_ limited for a while as I attempt to get my currently-nocturnal toddler on some semblance of a normal schedule. I want to give you quality work, so I feel like a short break is in everyone's best interest. This will allow me to write a few chapters in advance, also, so we can (hopefully) avoid future hiatuses.
> 
> In the meantime, here, have 7100 new words. This chapter was a beast.

Two gather at lunch, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“Did we already establish that the POV shifts are intentional?” the Sage asks before sipping on what’s left of her smoothie.

The Conductor scratches their head through the hood of their robe.  “--- -- --- ----?”

“Like in chapter one, remember?  Sam’s on the phone with Maeve, and he’s throwing up, and suddenly she’s pulling the phone away from her ear.  It just switches to her out of nowhere.  You leave Sam alone in the bathroom floor for a sentence.”  The Sage pushes the last remnants of peanut butter around the bottom of the glass with her straw.  “Anyway, you did it again in this chapter, when he talks to Maeve and Marie.  Marie grabs the phone from Maeve, but the readers are in the hallway of the bunker at the time with Sam.  It’s very confusing, but you’ve done it twice now, so I wondered if it was on purpose.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic.

“But why?”

“- ------ --- -- ------- -- --,” explains the Conductor.

“Wait, you planted it so that I would ask about it?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic.

“I don’t get it.”

The Conductor sighs and looks away from their screen.  “- ------ -- ------------.”

“That doesn’t make sense, either.”  The Sage sets down her empty glass.  She glances over at it.  “I wasn’t done with that.”

“----.  ----- ----- ----.”

The Sage picks up her glass and finishes her smoothie before asking, “Why did you need me to say something so you could make an introduction to chapter five?”

The Conductor waves their ancient cell phone in the air, then starts to type out a text.  The Sage checks Twitter and the Collective Skype window while she waits.  Finally, her text alert goes off.

“‘The timeline is screwed up, and I’m still writing the actual introduction.  You haven’t read it yet.  This is the end of the chapter.’”  The Sage frowns, confused.  “Wait.  So right now, while we’re going over my beta notes for the chapter, you’re in the middle of writing the chapter?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic.

“Oh my God,” the Sage says, sitting back in her chair with a bounce while she laughs so hard she nearly cries.  “Your out-of-order writing finally caught up with you.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and nods vigorously.

“You just made me comment on shit you haven’t even written.”

“-’- -----?” the Conductor offers.

“No, you aren’t.  You aren’t sorry, at all.”

There’s silence for five or six seconds, and then the Conductor flicks their Bic twice.

The Sage collects herself at last.  “You’re going to drive me crazy with this.”

“- ---- ---.”  The Conductor holds up one finger, telling the Sage to wait a moment, then turns again to their phone.  Their thumbs move rapidly, clicking and clacking the keys with their nails.

“‘My brain’s all jumbled puzzle pieces after the Arrangement.’ Well of course it is, Cee,” replies the Sage aloud.  “You never should have signed the damn thing.  You’ve watched _Supernatural_ , you _know_ nothing good ever comes from signing a contract.”

“-- ------ ---- - ---- ---- -- --- ----.”

The Sage sighs.  “I know it did.  Jesus.  I wish this wasn’t the only way to guarantee canon Destiel, because this is getting way out of hand.”

The Conductor snickers.  “#-------------.”

“Don’t bring the gothic meme into this.  Don’t bring any memes into this.”

The Conductor puts on a pair of sunglasses.

“Dammit, Cee.”  The Sage pulls off her hood, gray eyes intense as she glares at her friend through the screen.  “And what’s worse, I just figured out—as in literally just figured out—that you’ve been planning on using this—”  She holds up her phone.  “—to indicate plot points!  You’re using text messaging as a loophole so you don’t have to Morse code everything.”

“-- ---’- ----- ----.”

“Not the point.  I am not your—”  The Sage pauses, her brow wrinkled.  She starts rummaging through books and papers on her desk until she finds the script, then flips it open to Scene V.  “No.  No, snickerdoodle, I am not making a Game of Thrones reference when I have neither read the books nor seen the show.”

The Conductor whines.

“I’m sorry, Cee, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

The Conductor pouts.

“Don’t you have a chapter to write?  You know, now that you’ve spoiled bits of it because your timeline apparently has a will of its own?” says the Sage with an irate, inappropriately-placed giggle.

The Conductor grumbles.

“C’mon,” the Sage encourages as she opens up the empty Google Doc to watch the Conductor compose.   _“Adventure Time.”_

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.

* * *

Sam finds himself in his room with little recollection of how he got there.  He remembers being in the hallway—

* * *

“Actually,” interrupts the Sage, “one more thing.  Was Sam supposed to notice the bathrobe gaff?”

The Conductor blinks, then slowly flicks their Bic twice.

The Sage pales.  “Oh.  Oh, did I just draw attention to something I wasn’t supposed to?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic once.

“So Sam wasn’t going to point out that Dean’s worn two different robes so far?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic twice.

“...Shit.”

The Conductor nods.

“Show must go on?”

“---- ---- -- --,” agrees the Conductor, beginning again.

* * *

Sam finds himself in his room with little recollection of how he got there.  He remembers being in the hallway just outside of the kitchen.  It doesn’t take long to get from there to his barely-decorated bedroom, and he rarely, if ever, runs on autopilot.  Sam winces as he tries to recall, aggravating his headache.

Headache?  When did his head start hurting?   _Eye strain?_ he wonders to himself.   _Lack of sleep?  Not enough water?_  It could be any one of those things, or a combination of all three.  Sam sighs, and decides to treat the problem rather than worrying about how it happened.  There’s too much else to focus on, anyway.

For instance, there was Metatron, tucked away in a straightjacket somewhere in an unexploded cell of Heaven’s jail, likely plotting and planning and just biding his time until either his followers broke him out or Sam, Dean, and Cas got desperate enough to need his help for one reason or another.  There was Crowley, doing Hell knew what Hell knew where for any number of reasons that Hell couldn’t guess, but probably involved plotting and dealing and making their lives an even more complicated mess than they already were.  And, like Metatron, they’d inevitably wind up palling around with him at some point to get what they needed, all involved parties parting a bit more scorched than before.

Cain, of course, had joined the party.  There was once a youthful, hopeful, genealogically-curious Sam who would honestly have embraced the idea of a family reunion; it wasn’t every day that you got to meet one of the apparent founders of your lineage.  But, as relatives are wont to do, Cain had offered chit-chat over tea in his underwear, imparted some familial knowledge, handed over an unwanted heirloom, and then kicked everyone out of his house in a fit of elder rage.

It was the closest thing to a normal familial gathering they were ever bound to get, and Sam hadn’t even been invited.

Now, after running into Kate again, Sam was waiting to hear from every other monster that got away.  Knowing their luck, that damn skinwalker dog would turn back up, followed by a shapeshifter from kindergarten and a skittish Leviathan personal assistant.  Or had they killed him?  Sam honestly couldn’t remember.  After a while, all the hunts started to blur together into one horrific montage.

Sam would bet money Dean hadn’t hustled yet that there was some other bigger, badder foe waiting offstage for their cue to upend their lives and impede any kind of forward momentum toward fixing Dean’s soul and Cas’ grace and Sam’s increasing sense of paranoia.  Maybe it would be something urbane that finally took them each down, like a tooth infection, or a bad piece of cheese, or tax evasion.

Sam no longer wonders why he has a headache, but instead why he isn’t _always_ suffering from one.  No wonder he’s embraced fanfiction so easily.  Why the fuck would he want to think about his own life?

Although, technically, reading fanfic means he is still very much thinking about his own life.  The universe is a cruel mistress, indeed.  

Just as Sam is just about to walk into his room and throw himself headlong into his own personal round of self-meta misery, the phone rings.  He looks at the caller ID, sighs, and decides to let Maeve do it for him.

“Hi, Maeve—”

“—I’m Dad,” she replies, deadpan as ever.

Sam immediately regrets his decision to answer the phone.  “You’re kind of a brat, you know that, right?”

Maeve ignores him, instead asking, “What has he read?”

“Dean started [_Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634), but doesn’t want to finish it.”

“Really?  Do tell.”

Sam screws his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose as he thinks of a way to explain Dean’s reluctance to finish the fic, and settles for something mostly honest.  “He's reading [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) now because there's, 'monsters and fighting and manly shit.'"

* * *

“The tension of waiting for Dean to finish reading [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) is _also_ driving me nuts, by the way,” the Sage interrupts.  “Is that going to happen this chapter, or do I need to play the time warp again?”

The Conductor stops typing.

  
  
  
  
  


“You’ve made your point.”

The Conductor resumes.

* * *

“What was that, Sam?” Maeve crackles through the speaker.  “The line just went completely dead.  Nothing but static.  I blame your hair.”

Sam grimaces as his headache ratchets up a notch in intensity.  “I said that he’s reading [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) now because there's, 'monsters and fighting and manly shit,'" he repeats in a pained voice.

“Oh, I see,” says Maeve knowingly.  “It was the dancing that got to him, wasn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Sam asks, baffled, but Maeve glosses over his confusion.

“So he’s reading it now, as in right now?”

Sam nods before realizing how ridiculous that is to do on the phone.  “Right this now.  And actually,” he begins, “speaking of things you know regarding [ _Sex 101_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634)—”

“We aren’t.”

“—how does betty days know about the bunker?”

The line is quiet for five or six painfully-long seconds.  “You…  You guys actually _have_ a bunker?”

“Well, yeah,” Sam begins with a little pride.  “We kind of inherited this giant library of a—”

“You do know that the word ‘bunker’ stopped being cool after the Cold War, right?”

“I fail to see how the popularity of a word has anything to do with betty days having knowledge of what I assumed to be secret,” Sam snaps.

Maeve _tsks._  “Sam, Sam, Sam.  I tried to warn you.  What all have you read?"

“Um.”  Sam clears his throat, suddenly embarrassed.

“It’s okay, Sam,” says Maeve with a tone resembling gentle.  “You’re with friends.”

Sam takes a deep breath.  “Just _[Sex 101](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467634)._ ”

“See?  That wasn’t so ha—”

“And _[Being Dean Winchester](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850)._ ”

“So you’re reading with De—”

“And _[Words with Friends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790776)._ ”

“Oh.  Oh.  Well, that was unexpec—”

“And [_Coffee & Donuts_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844) and _[Entrelace](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3091439),_ ” he finishes at last.

Maeve whistles lowly.  “You’ve been a busy man, Mr. Winchester.”

“Really?”  Marie’s voice pipes up, apparently further away from the cell than her friend, muted as if, for once, Sam isn’t on speakerphone. There is barely-restrained hunger in her voice as she demands, “Do tell.  What have we read?”

"BDW, 101, WWF, C&D, and ballet,” Maeve answers with voice raised.

“George Takei says, ‘Oh _myyy._ ’”  Marie crosses the room the grace and speed of the inspired and snatches the phone away from Maeve.  “Tell me, my darling, wonderful Sam,” she croons into the phone, “did you enjoy them?”

Sam chooses his words very carefully as he speaks, attempting to traipse through what can only be a conversational minefield.  “They were, um, good stories,” he begins.  “There was plot, you know?  Uh…”  He feels the beginning of sweat at his temples, but if he survived Mock Trial in high school, he can make it through this.  “There was, well, development.   _Movement._  Definitely lots and lots of movement.”  Sam grasps for lifelines, for any words that will help prevent drowning in a potential conversation about explicitly-rated fanfic with a teenage fan.  “There were vivid descriptions of…”  He closes his eyes and tenses.  “Various things?”

Marie chuckles lewdly. “Yeah, you liked it.  I knew you would.  Bet you just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

Sam checks his peripheral vision for Gabriel.  Still no Trickster.

Maybe _Marie_ is the Trickster.

Maybe _he_ is the Trickster.

* * *

“I swear,” says the Sage, “if you try and write another instance of gothic meme into this story…”

“---’-- ----?” wonders the Conductor.  They stop typing and pick up a snack canister from a pile of books on the floor next to them.

“I’ll have a giant bruise on my forehead from _hitting it against my desk in protest._ ”

The Conductor offers up their sunglasses in tribute?

“Also, are we in another mid-section aside?  Because this is starting to feel like _The Princess Bride,_ and I’m not sure which of us is Grandpa in this scenario.”

The Conductor offers her a snack in tribute?

“No, I do not want a peanut.”

The Conductor grins and continues waggling the peanuts at the screen.

“Just keep writing.”

* * *

“Were you…”  Sam groans and rubs at a temple.  “Did you say something?”

“Is Sam okay?” he hears Maeve ask in the background.

“Tell her I just have a headache,” Sam assures.  “I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are,” Marie continues sweetly.  “And I’m also sure that you came harder than you have in your entire life after you read about them fucking each other that first time.”

Sam pales as his brain short-circuits.  “Marie,” he begins, sounding much calmer and more settled than he feels, “I’m not discussing this with you, as it is completely irrelevant to our discussion, never mind tasteless.”

Marie laughs.  “Yeah, well, I’m not the one getting off to the fictional sexcapades of your brother and your best friend.”

“Yes, you are,” corrects Maeve.

“And how.”

“You all are in _high school!_ ” Sam says in disbelief.  “Why are you even thinking about sex?  You’re like half my age!”

“Oh,” Maeve starts, “I’m sorry, Mr. Winchester.  Were we standing on your lawn?”

“Yeah, plus we’re eighteen, aren’t dead, and have internet access,” adds Marie.  “What do you think we do with our free time?  Jacking off is not a gendered activity.”

“Men think they own everything,” Maeve grumbles.

“Whatever, look, I am _not_ listening to two teenagers discuss their masturbatory habits on the phone,” Sam vows.  “I’m getting off.”

“Only if Dean’s involved,” Marie adds slyly.

“Not always,” sneaks out of Sam’s mouth before he can reach his hand up to stop it.

“Never on purpose,” reassures Marie.  “He just slips into your thoughts and gets under your skin before you realize what’s happening, doesn’t he?  Every time you have sex, when you get rough, it’s because you start thinking of Dean, all sweet and slow and giving, and you want to be the opposite, want to take everything your partner has to give to push his voice out of your ear, to fuck him out of your mind.”

Sam hears the smack of two palms meeting in a high five as Maeve says, “Accidental Wincest.”

“And the angel,” Marie continues, her voice low and sultry, “with his perfectly blue eyes and his perfectly mussed hair, all naive innocence wrapped up in muscles and dominant words.  But he doesn’t just pop up into your thoughts, does he, Sam?”

“No,” Sam whispers.

“No, he’s _always_ in the back of your mind, but he’s the one who takes now, not you.  No, he wraps his fingers in your long hair and tugs you to your feet, spits slurs against your lips—”

“ _Boy,_ ” says Maeve, slow and purposefully.

“—and you just melt, you moan, and you’d do _anything_ for him.”  Marie inhales, exhales, and lets her voice return to its normal pitch.  “Wouldn’t you, Sammy?”

After a long pause in which Sam remembers both how to breathe and how to focus on everything besides having an erection, he squeaks out, “This is a very uncomfortable conversation and could we please talk about literally anything else?”

“Oh, I bet you’re uncomfortable,” Marie responds, launching herself back into the role she was born to play.  “But are you certain it’s the conversation?”

“Yes, I am very certain that it—”

“Or maybe it’s because your cock is straining against the zipper of your jeans, aching to be stroked.”

“I’m wearing sweatpan—”

“Sam, please,” Maeve interrupts him.  “Let her have her moment.  She’ll never shut up if you don’t.”  She faux coughs for emphasis.  “I did tell you not to read the fanfiction.”

“But she—”

“ _Or,_ ” Marie continues, “maybe _you’re_ making _yourself_ uncomfortable—”

Sam huffs out a crazed, frantic noise as his face burns.  “I think I’m a contributing factor, yes, but—”

“Yes, of course you are, because you’re consumed by the idea of Dean, bound and bossy and begging Cas to move, to fuck him like he means it, aren’t you?”

“I—I wasn’t,” Sam insists.

“Of course you weren’t,” Marie says with false reassurance.  “Dean isn’t begging because he’s too busy groaning around your cock.  Not that you’d hear him anyway, not when Cas is ordering you to fuck your brother’s mouth.”

“You’re…”  Sam flips through every bitch face in his arsenal while flipping through his mental dictionary.  At last, he settles on, “Insane.  You.  Are.  Insane.”

“I’m right,” she says, triumphant.

“No, you are very, very wrong.”

“It’s okay, Sam,” Maeve pipes up.  “Everybody Wincests sometimes.”

“Well _I_ don’t.”

“Except when you do,” Marie says with authority.

"Furthermore,” he says, ignoring her and soldiering on, “I’m not a switch.  I don’t submit.”

“Oh my sweet summer Sam,” Marie says with a sigh.  “No power in the universe can resist bending to the will of those dominant angel brows.”

“This is nuts,” Sam finally says, absolutely floored, flabbergasted, frazzled.  “This isn’t me.  This is _not_ who I am.”

“But what if it is?” Marie prompts.

Sam opens his mouth to protest, but hesitates.  These aren’t the kinds of thoughts he has.  He doesn’t lust after Cas, and he certainly doesn’t lust after his brother.  It’s the fanfic doing this to him, worming its way into his thoughts and permeating every part of his life.

It’s the fanfic.  It has to be.

“I’m not incestuous,” he says tiredly, sliding down the wall next to his bedroom door, defeated.  “They’re my _family,_ Marie.”

“So you’re channeling nobility and keeping it therein,” she replies.

“You’re evil,” Sam tells her.

“And you’re thinking about it.”

Sam mumbles, “I’m going back to hell,” as the call ends.  Marie stares at Maeve’s phone with a smug smile, beaming with pride.

Maeve immediately snatches her phone back and punches Marie in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“What are you _thinking,_ Marie?” asks Maeve.

Marie snorts.  “I’m thinking that was entirely too easy.”

“Are you actively trying to provoke the Progenitor?”

“No,” Maries denies with an eye roll, “though I would love to see her dismounted from her high horse.  I just wanted to provoke Sam.”

“I don’t understand,” Maeve states with a frown.  “I thought Sam was your precious baby.”

Marie shrugs and looks disinterested.  “I like to hurt the things I love.”

Maeve narrows her eyes and adjusts her glasses.  “Inappropes.”

“Don’t kink shame, Maeve,” Marie says with a flip of her hair.  “It’s unbecoming.”

* * *

After twenty minutes of waiting for Sam to return, Dean finally wanders up to his room.  The door is ajar, but he knocks anyway.

“Ungh,” groans Sam from inside where he lies on the bed, knees up, feet flat, and an arm thrown over his eyes.

Dean pushes the door fully open as cautiously as possible, but it still winds up slamming against the inside wall, and Sam whines again.  

“Dude, are you okay?” Dean asks.

“No, I have the worst fucking headache,” says Sam.  “It’s like…  You remember those visions I used to get?”

Dean huffs, almost a laugh, but not quite.  “How could I forget?”

“It’s that kind of pain,” Sam explains.  “And I keep hearing weird voices.  But not like in the house or in my brain.  They’re…  Someplace else.”

“Are you hallucinating?” Dean asks as he sits down on the bed.  “Is Lucifer hiding in your head again?”

Sam peeps out from under his arm.  “Why would I be seeing Lucifer again?”

“Shit, I don’t know.  I mean you’re hearing voices apparently.  You did the whole demon cure thing on me.”

“How would that make Lucifer show back up?” Sam asks, confused.

Dean blanches for a moment, like he’s said something he shouldn’t, but he quickly puts his face back in order.  “Cross-contamination?” he offers.  “I mean, we honestly have no clue how or why this demon cure works.  You’re essentially just flavor-injecting humanity into someone.  Maybe it takes part of the human out of you.  Equivalent exchange.”

“What, like alchemy?”

“Yeah,” says Dean.  “Alchemy seems right up the Men of Letters’ fucked up little alley.  Anyway, I thought maybe it might have cracked you up a little bit again or something.”

Sam reaches out to pat Dean’s knee.  “I assure you, the so-many-days-since-Lucifer-sighting counter has not reset.  I’m sure it’s only migraine-related auditory disturbance.  I didn’t know how else to describe the intensity of the pain beyond likening it to the demon visions.”

“Anything I can do?”

“No,” Sam says, “I just need to sleep it off.  I’m sorry, Dean.  I know you wanted reading companionship.”

Dean shakes his head.  “Don’t worry about it.  I can manage.  If I have to, I’ll come sit in here and bug you,” he says with a grin.  He pulls the blanket up over his brother, remembers tucking him in when they were kids.

“I’m not a child, Dean,” Sam says in protest, but still tugs the blanket up further and snuggles farther into the bed.

“You’ll always be my kid brother, Sammy.”  Dean leaves the room before Sam can complain further.

He walks back to the kitchen and stands in the doorway for a minute, glaring at [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) half-heartedly.  Dean does want to continue reading it, and it seemed like he was getting to the smutty bits, anyway.  He certainly wouldn’t want to read that in front of his brother.

Dean sits down at the table and opens it to where he left off.  As he suspected, he’s left off just before the porn.  Dean has a great appreciation for porn as an art, regardless of what Sam thinks of his selections.  There’s an elegance to sex that he greatly appreciates, and, like all artists should, he endeavors to practice whenever possible.  It’s why he typically only _looks_ at porn, rather than jerking off to it.  Once in a while he’ll enjoy a home grown orgasm, sure, but Dean prefers getting other people off as opposed to himself.

He believes that sex should be a social experience, and if that makes him a slut, well, so be it.

But Dean doesn’t trust his self-control any longer, not since becoming a Knight of Hell.  His tastes…  Changed during his time as a demon.  He got off on the murder and the blood and the gore, on cruelty, physical or not.  When Dean remembers his treatment of Ann Marie, he feels sick to his stomach.  All his life, it’s not been the act itself that turned his crank, but the way he made his partner feel.  Knowing that he made her think poorly of herself, coupled with the acts that truly aroused him as a Knight, has made masturbating less than appealing.

Reading about how Cas and he fucked Cheryl, though…  That’s definitely turning him on.

Particularly the idea of being able to experience how he was pleasuring his partner.

 

> Dean felt a pleasant trill at his spine, a smug triumph, and Dean's breath was completely taken away from him when everything suddenly doubled.
> 
> He could, somehow, feel himself not only circling Cheryl's clit, he could feel what Cheryl was feeling.
> 
> He didn't even have a clit, but suddenly he knew what one felt like, and fucking Jesus Christ almighty did it feel amazing. Dean pressed a little harder and they gasped in unison.

Dean feels himself stirring in his boxers and shifts in his seat.  He’s never told anyone how often he’d wondered what it would be like to experience female arousal.  It’s one of Dean’s guilty pleasures when he masturbates sometimes, thinking about how thrilling it might be to feel himself getting wet and dripping against the crotch of his panties when he’s turned on; to dip his fingers under the waistband and slowly into his own body and feel slick and warm and open; to fuck himself, feel the stretch and give of his inner walls; to bring his hand to his mouth and lick it off, tasting himself; to circle and press and flick at his clit with those same deliciously wet fingers--

He presses the heel of his hand against his dick.  It’s absolutely, fully on board now, but he decides to read a little more.  Not worth having a fantasy if you never stoke its flames.

 

> It was only a matter of seconds before Dean couldn't help himself any longer and leaned back down to start lapping at Cheryl's clit.
> 
> Cheryl bucked up instinctively, which made Dean grind onto the mattress. He knew she liked it light at first, then fast and hard, two fingers inside her and pressing up into her g-spot until her gasps turned into low groans. "Fuck, Dean, how are you doing this?"
> 
> Dean could feel his own orgasm stirring in him as hers ramped up, because every time she felt a jolt of pleasure, Dean did too, and it was the exact same as masturbating, trying this and that, dropping what didn't work and going with what did, over and over again.
> 
> He was acutely aware that if Cheryl came, he would too, and even though he could read her mind, he was still trapped in a male body, and there was no way he'd be able to get it up again after experiencing a female orgasm.

Trapped.  He’d never actually thought of it that way before, and doesn’t care to think much on it now.  Right now, Dean just savors the dizzy arousal and the light-headedness it brought.  He slips his hand into his pajama pants and begins to slowly stroke himself through his boxers, wishing he either had a cunt to bury his face in or someone to suck him off.  Both thoughts make him moan, and his hand flies up to his mouth.  [ _Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850) falls from his grip, before sliding off of the table and onto the floor.  He means to bite down on his knuckles, keep his voice from echoing through the kitchen, but his palm slaps over it instead and _oh._

Oh, that’s good, too.

Dean strokes his dick through the material a little harder, thinks about being held from behind against another warm body, and it’s _their_ hand clamping over his mouth, _their_ fingers teasing him through his underwear.  He takes his hand away from his cock and his hips cant up of their own accord.  Dean tickles his fingers down his neck, imagining it’s someone else’s lips, their tongue.

A loving captor.  Someone who understands his desperate desire to be driven out of his mind, like he drives the women he loves for a single night out of theirs.

Someone who gets that he’d rather be them.

He trails his fingers to the belt of his robe and undoes it.  Dean’s fingers fly to a nipple and tease it, too, barely touching as he pushes his chest into his own hands, tightens the hand across his face to stifle his helplessly-aroused whines, letting loose freely, openly, knowing they’re muffled into quietness.  He yanks on the other roughly, pinches it with his nails as he tries to rub himself against his underwear, knowing if he had a clit, he could get himself off like that.  He thinks about how tight his panties would be, how they’d be pulled taut across his slit as he mindlessly sought friction, how the lace would catch on his clit over and over until he finally lost himself completely.

Dean’s so close to coming he could scream.

And then the Mark takes over his thoughts.

 

> **Cas was hanging, spikes in each of his shoulders pinning him to the wall, stomach torn open, intestines hanging down, blood dripping steadily from his body and mouth.**

He exhales like he’s been kicked in the gut as he comes untouched in his shorts.

* * *

The Seven gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“You have called us, Sister Progenitor,” say five of them.

The Progenitor clears her throat and opens an eldritch tome.  She flips through the pages carelessly as she searches, long nails catching on the edges.  The quiet _bat-bat-bat_ of aging paper turning floods the airwaves.  A long strand of blond hair falls out of her hood and she attempts to blow it back into submission, never taking her eyes from the pages.  It rebels, again and again, but her attention to the book remains steady.

_Bat-bat-bat._

_Pffft._

_Bat-bat-bat._

“Are you going to tell us what you’re looking for, or are we going to be stuck in Cee’s exercise in onomatopoeia for the next five minutes?” the Sage asks at last.

“I am looking,” begins the Progenitor, “for the Wincest clause, since two of us are so keen on invoking it.”

“Oh God, Peppermint, you did it again?”  Rosencrantz rolls his eyes.  “This is why you should have let me and Guildenstern handle this, Progenitor.  We can handle rules.  We understand the laws of fanfic and respect their sovereignty.”

Marcie pipes up with an indignant, “It’s _transformative fic—_ ”

“Well it was fanfic in my day,” Rosencrantz snaps.  “No muss, no fuss, no pretension or PC terminology.  Just fanfic, like it was in the dark ages, back in the days when we had to worry about our fandoms’ creators suing us for IP infringement if our zines ever saw the light of popularity or, worse, author recognition—”

“ _Darkover_ -gate ‘92,” interjects Guildenstern with bowed head.  “Never forget.”

“—which only got worse once we moved our content to Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, Yahoo Groups, and FFN—”

“The Anne Rice-acre of 2002,” Guildenstern elaborates.  “The night was dark and full of lawyers.”

“And Laurell K. Hamilton and her publishers, too,” the Progenitor adds without looking up for her search.  “They weren’t as public and vocal as Rice, but there was just as much quality non-canonical literature spaced to the void because its deletion was demanded.  The early aughts were a difficult time for fanfiction.  I mean, we almost lost morethanbrothers.net due to fear of editorial repercussion.  Thank God Edlund gave the green light to write fanfic.”

“Sort of,” says Rosencrantz.  “I mean his exact words were, ‘Do whatever you want, I have zero interest in what you do with what I write.  Have the brothers tandem fuck robots from Mars, go nuts.’”

Guildenstern wrinkles his nose.  “You memorized it?”

“You didn’t?”

Peppermint flicks a bit of dirt out from under her thumbnail.  “Look, this history lesson is simply fascinating, let me tell you, but what does it have to do with the Wincest clause or these supposed ‘laws of fanfic’?” she asks, making a face and air-quoting like an angel of the lord.

“Everything,” replies the Progenitor, looking up from the book at last as she ticks off the laws.  “‘Law number one: All _prompts_ are valid.  Law number two: All _words_ are valid.  Law number three: All _pairings_ are valid.  Law number four: There are no new concepts, characters, or creations; the multiverse belongs to _all_ of us.  Law number five: We are _all_ gods in the sandbox of fandom; tread lightly and rule with care.’  Ideas have power, Peppermint.  Fanfiction is the realization of those ideas, and thus, they are powerful, and you have to use that power wisely.”

“Sure, Uncle Ben, whatever,” Peppermint dismisses.  “Look, that may be how you all felt as members of the old guard, but this is a new era!  Fanfiction is _mainstream_ now.  I mean, major news outlets write articles about it.  They give rec lists.  Career authors are open about their fanfic authorship and get in fights with other fans about their ships and the way they interpret canon.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” counters the Progenitor.  “By invoking the clause, you’re baiting a ship war within the Collective, and we have to pose a united front.  The more you suggest the possibility of, and inclination toward sibling incest to my precious Sam, the more likely he is to act on his natural, beautiful urges.  And then Destiel comes to a screeching halt.”

“You know,” ponders the Sage, “this brings up an interesting question: why are there five hardcore Wincest shippers on the hunter/angel-won’t-you-please-fuck-already committee?”

“Law three,” answer Rosencrantz and Guildenstern together.

“I’m a multishipper, actually,” Peppermint explains.  “And Marcie doesn’t ship anything.  She calls herself the…  What was it?”

“The David Attenborough of _Supernatural_ fanfiction,” says Marcie.  “I find all of you fascinating.  Especially your mating habits.”

“So where does that leave you, Progenitor?” the Sage asks.  “I mean, you were webmistress for the Wincest fansite.  What are you doing here, leading us?”

The Progenitor leans into the lantern light.  Dark circles color the skin beneath her gray eyes, and her forehead is full of deep wrinkles.  The corner of her mouth twitches up slightly as she pushes her tongue against the inside of her cheek.  She blinks once, slowly, contemplative, then says, “Because Sam is mine, and Dean doesn’t deserve him.”

“Oh.”  The Sage nods in understanding, but is, in reality, slightly horrified.

“Also, Ch— _Carver_ asked me to, and I owed him a favor.”

“So,” Marcie starts after an uncomfortable silence, “what were you looking up about the Wincest clause?  And why is it in that book anyway?”

“The Wincest clause is in this book because this book contains everything regarding Destiel shipping and fanfiction,” she explains.  “Now, section one of the clause states, ‘Sam is allowed to have sexually-charged feelings for Dean when certain criteria are met or when circumstances necessitate it.  1a. If, for example, the iteration of Dean in question will never act on his feelings for Castiel unless Sam confesses his attraction, the Wincest clause may be invoked.  

“1b. Likewise, if the pairing of Sam and Dean does not in any way diminish the pairing of Dean and Castiel, the Wincest clause may be invoked (see 2a, Wincestiel).  

“1c. The Wincest clause is automatically invoked should past Wincest or Wincestually-related activities, both consensual and/or non-consensual, be discussed (see 2b, Weecest).  

“1d. The Wincest clause should never be invoked without considerable thought as to the intended audience of the transformative work.  

“1e. Similarly, the Wincest clause should neither be invoked nor discussed when in contact, either direct or indirect, with Carver Edlund or the possible individuals upon which his characters are loosely based (see 3a for theoretical exemptions).”

“How does keeping Sam’s interest so as to make him make Dean read Destiel fanfic break the rules?” asks Marcie, rubbing the side of her face in exasperation.  “I mean that only serves the cause of the pairing, regardless of either 1d or 1e.  And what about the theoretical exemptions?  How does this not fall under them, whatever they are?”

“There’s no precedence for our situation,” says the Progenitor.  “It’s hard to judge because we’re sailing into uncharted seas here.  This is the most literal real person fanfiction ever written because the Conductor is literally manipulating real people inside of a fanfiction, and we’re all accessories to the fact.”

“Magic is so weird,” Guildenstern correctly observes.

 _“There’s_ the understatement of the year.”  The Sage is also correct.  “Speaking of, Cee, you want to weigh in here with some legalese, or have we lost you?”

The Conductor waves a hand dismissively over the top of _Maxims of Chess_ and says nothing.

“I would think that this situation matters to you since you wrote the laws of fanfic and the Wincest clause and…  And…  What’s the name of the Destiel fanfiction rule book?  I know you’ve named it.”

The Conductor puts their open book on their head pages down to save their place.  They pull out their phone, and compose a quick text.

The Sage checks her inbox.  “‘The Book of the Damned.’  Of course that’s what you called it.  That doesn’t look like human skin to me.  Progenitor, are you reading a cursed tome bound and populated by sheets of epidermis?”

The Progenitor carefully closes the book, leaving her thumb on the selected page.  She turns it over several times, considering the possibility before answering, “No, no, I think we’re good.”

“I mean the name is all kinds of accurate,” continues the Sage, “but the book is all kinds of wrong.”

“- ---- - ------ -------- -------,” the Conductor explains.

“It certainly is creative.  Wanek probably put a lot of time into that prop, though.  License or not, you shouldn’t just toss his genius out the window.”

“--’- -- ------!”

“An _homage._  You—”

“Wait, you can _hear_ them?” Peppermint interrupts, confused.  “They actually _speak?”_

The Conductor slowly retrieves their book from their head, re-buries their face, picks up the Bic, and flicks it twice.

The Sage nervously giggles once.  “I think we were talking about you breaking the rules, yes?  I’m certain that’s what we were gathered here to do.”

“Yes,” agrees the Progenitor, “that is why I called this emergency meeting.  I think we should take a vote as to whether Peppermint and Marcie are allowed to continue contacting Sam, since they seem to be incapable of handling working within the confines of the law.”

“We’re just following the script!” Peppermint insists.

“Actually,” Marcie amends, “we followed a misprint, and then you decided to run with it for your own selfish gains.”

Peppermint slaps an open palm to her chest, offended.   _“Et tu,_ Brute?”

“They’re about to sacrifice our position within the Collective for the sake of the story, Sir!  There’s no time for friendship right now!  Think strategically!”

The Conductor peeks over the top of their book.

“I mean you’ve fulfilled your purpose,” says the Progenitor.  “You passed along the links, you got Dean to start reading.  What else is there for you to do?”

Maeve and Marie rip off their hoods in tandem.

“So you mean all you wanted us to do was start the ball rolling?” Marie asks.  “We got to be the first players out, we got everybody excited and revved to go, and now we’re just supposed to sit out the rest of the game on the sidelines?”

“That is kind of how pawns work, Peppermint,” the Progenitor replies.

“Or they get captured,” the Sage says.

Marie blinks rapidly.  “What?”

“Nothing!”  The Sage tugs at the collar of her robe and giggles half-heartedly.  “Absolutely nothing.  Right, Cee?”

The Conductor whistles innocently as they crack open _1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations._

The Sage groans.  “Not helping.”

“Look,” begins the Progenitor, “it doesn’t matter how big a role you played.  There are no small parts, only small actors, right?”

Maeve narrows her eyes.  “That’s a lie directors tell susceptible actors to bend them to their will.  We’re not falling for it, and we’re not giving up the Winchesters.”

“But it’s our turn with them,” whines Rosencrantz.

“Yeah,” agrees Guildenstern, “you can’t hog them all to yourselves.”

“Oh my God, guys, the boys aren’t a commodity.”  The Progenitor considers her statement then amends, “Okay, so maybe they are, but!  Doublemint twins,” she says, addressing Maeve and Marie, “you are the weakest link, and Stoppard fodder,” she continues to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “you’re background players, and you know it, or were your codenames not a goddamn clue?”

The chat dissolves into grumbles and muttering.

The Progenitor sets the Book of the Damned aside and waits for the Collective to quieten.  “I propose a vote.  Everyone extinguish your lights.  All those in favor of letting the girls continue to interact with Sam will relight them after a count of three.  All opposed will stay dark.  Are we in agreement?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.

* * *

Dean cleans himself up in the bathroom, washing himself off like he hates every inch of his anatomy.  He stares at his dick like the traitor it is, stares at his Marked arm and wonders if cutting it off would fix him or if the Mark would just show up somewhere else.

He walks over to the mirror and stares into it, waiting for his eyes to turn black.

“I know you can hear me,” Dean says to his reflection, “so listen up.  We’re reading this fucking fanfiction, we’re jumping on this train, and I don’t care if you like it or not.  I am going to figure myself out if it kills us both.”

 **Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?** purrs the Mark from the mirror.   **You know I won’t let you die, Dean.  You’re all mine.**

“Never again,” Dean vows.  “I’m gonna fight you until I can’t fight anymore.”

**You’re going to have to tell Sammy about us eventually, you know.  Let him know exactly what Cain has, ha, _graced_ you with.  Unless, of course, you’re embarrassed of me.  And oh, won’t our little Sam be excited!**

“Shut up,” says Dean through clenched teeth.

**We might even get a mayhem _menage à trois_ going before long.  Bring back the Boy King with a faithful Knight by his side to rule the world.**

“Shut.  Up.”

**Speaking of brothers, think about how good it will feel to watch the light fade in Castiel’s eyes once he realizes that _I_ am your sickness.  That there’s no, hmm...   _Uncaging_ you.  That you are the Beast his Father warned him about.**

_“Shut up!”_  Dean punches the mirror and watches the blackness seep into his sockets through the shards of newly-broken glass.

He sighs and walks off to find a broom and some gloves to clean up the aftermath of his tantrum.  His reflection watches him go with a smirk, rubbing its hands together with glee.

**He said ‘shut up’ to me!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger-warning for mention of rape, because the Mark of Cain is a jerk.

Dean hates mirrors.  He hates parallels.  He hates reflecting on his life and seeing not growth, but stagnation.  He hates standing in the barren, unsown fields of what he could have been.  Dean hates the echo of John’s voice in the early pages of the journal and reading about his apparent “killer instinct” at the ripe old age of six.

He hates that it was true, that his father was right about him.  He hates how much he enjoyed the affects of the Mark.  He hates that he wants those feelings back, how he wants to feel the adrenaline surge after a good kill, how _alive_ it made him feel to watch something else _die._  He hates how much he loved the disease, how hard he wanted to hold on to the demon awoken within him because it meant his own demons were gone.

Now that his humanity has been unbottled, so have his feelings and his wants and his longings and the horrors he carries into his nightmares and he hates.  Hate has turned into a response as reflexive to his body as his heart pumping blood.

He hates that he can’t stop hating.

_He just hates._

Dean thought that agreeing to read fanfiction would prove a mindless entertainment.  He figured it was smut, so he’d scan through to the good parts, he’d get off to it, and then he’d move on.  It would distract himself from hating anything and everything that existed for a few hours, wrap him up in a tale that was akin to but not his own.

But fuck if he isn’t actually enjoying the goddamn thing.  Granted, Dean would probably enjoy it more if it stopped making him question how much he truly knows himself and the degree to which he accepts who he is.  Dean’s also a little afraid of the sexy parts now, too; he’d rather forget about his experience masturbating altogether.  It may have been the despicable mental images that prompted his orgasm, but it was the porn he’d been caught up in, that inspired him to explore.  He’s at least moved past feeling guilty about it, because Dean knows it was the Mark; it wasn’t him; it wasn’t his fault.

For fucking once, he’d decided as he scrubbed his skin sunburn-pink and rough in the shower earlier, it wasn’t his fault.

He would, however, now that he’s fresh and clean and walking through the bunker, like to move past the uneasy feeling in his gut that hasn’t left since he realized that he did, in fact, feel trapped in his own skin.  Dean has absolutely no idea how to process that.  He’s beyond certain he’s a man—Dean’s rather attached to and protective of his dick, thank you very much, no matter what he chooses to think about when he masturbates—but he enjoys so many distinctively, traditionally feminine things.

Dean never gave mind to how insecure he felt about the things he likes.  It was easier to hide it and project it elsewhere, usually to teasing Sam or making an off-color joke about some random person they ran into on the job.

But Dean’s determined to look inward, to contemplate himself and learn who he truly is once and for all.  Maybe Sam’s right; maybe reading about his fictional counterpart will shine a light on his reality.  Maybe those empty rows can prove fertile, after all.  Maybe he still has time to grow.

If he’s going to choose to keep fighting for his humanity, Dean figures he’d better know the person he’s fighting for.

He’d changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants and thrown on a hoodie.  The more layers he wears, the more shielded he feels; Dean would honestly put on four more shirts if he thought it would give him courage and not just make him feel both pathetic and overdressed.

Dean stops off in the kitchen and snatches [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051) from the floor.  If he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it in his room with the bed that remembers him.

**Not like anyone else is going to cradle you like the mattress does.  Only Mommy did, right, Dean?**

He digs his fingers into the Mark on his arm, but otherwise ignores it.

Dean walks into his room, carefully sits and settles himself into the pillows on his side—and just when had he designated a personal side to his own bed, anyway?—takes a deep breath, and opens up to chapter three.

He meets Boo and a guardian angel there, and the breath he inhaled leaves his chest in a rush.

 

> He was in his old bedroom back in Lawrence, four years old, clutching Boo, his teddy bear he'd gotten on his first birthday, aptly named because that was the first word he had uttered upon unwrapping the package with chubby little hands. "Boo!" he'd cried, and everyone cooed and clapped. Dean hugged his teddy bear to his chest and cried whenever anyone tried to take her away.

> He held her all the time until Sammy was born, and the only time he could ever part with her was when Sammy cried. Dean put Boo in his baby brother's lap sometimes, or his crib, or his bassinet. When he fell asleep, he would take Boo back and thank her for helping Sammy.

> Now, he held Boo out of desperation as the fire grew all around him. He screamed for his mother and father, but no one came. He was scared for them and for Sammy because he didn't know where they were, if they were in the same fire that surrounded him, if they knew it was even happening.

> He coughed and cried and sputtered, and shoved his face in Boo's chest to keep the smoke away, then shut his eyes tight, waiting for the pain to hit, waiting for the darkness.

> A fluttering disturbed the air around him, and Dean lifted his head to find he was no longer in his house. There was no more fire, no more smoke. He looked around.

> He was on a dock overlooking a lake. The air was crisp and smelled like autumn: smoke-tinged air, but in a way that didn't choke him. The trees surrounding the lake were the color of fire, but not the kind that burned. Rather, it was the kind that warmed and soothed. It was the fire that protected instead of destroyed.

> It was the essence of life instead of death.

> Dean stood on the dock and turned around, Boo still hugged tight to his chest.

> A man stood ten feet away, staring off into the distance. His expression was still and stoic, but the chill breeze ruffled his black hair and made his long trench coat sway against him.

> Dean approached him, hesitant and a little scared. "Do... do I know you?"

> As though the man hadn't noticed Dean was there, he looked down at him and tilted his head. His eyes were bluer than the lake that surrounded them, and much deeper too. He squatted down to Dean's level and smiled, a small shift of the corners of his lips and eyes. "Yes, you do. My name is Castiel."

> Dean furrowed his brow, rubbing at Boo's ear— a habit he picked up whenever he was confused— and asked, "Are you my guardian angel?"

> Castiel smiled wider, warmer, white teeth and sparkling eyes, and replied, "That's exactly what I am, Dean," then he reached out and smoothed down Dean's hair. It was a soft, soothing touch, and it eased the tension in Dean’s shoulders.

It isn’t the first time Dean’s wondered if Cas has always been there, watching over him, albeit doing a piss poor job.  His mother had promised him there were angels doing just that, after all.  Having been, herself, a hunter, Dean wonders how she could have told him angels were there when she knew full well that they didn’t exist.

He tries not to think of the lies his family was built on.

No wonder he and Sam are so driven to hide the truth, any truth, from each other.  No one ever taught them by example otherwise, not even his revered Mary, mother full of grace, whom the Lord was never with.

Dean remembers Mary patching up his own bear, because Dean played with it too roughly.  It served as a car along the rails of the porch, and a boat when he snuck it into the bathtub, and a cushion for going down the slide a few times.  Mary was forever stitching a tear or sewing a limb back on or replacing a button eye.

He thinks it was only named Bear; he thinks it might have been his first real, ungarbled word.  Talking never came easily to him, not even as a child.  Choosing not to speak after the fire was less of a choice and more of a proclivity, really.

Bear had been accidentally left behind in a motel room, and John was two-hundred miles down the road before Dean woke up in his booster seat and realized he was gone.  John had still borne resemblance to a father at that point, and he’d pulled off the highway and into a gas station, fumbled the buttons of the payphone to coerce it into making a free call, and rang the front desk.

But Bear was gone.

So Dean replaced him with Sam.

It had been so easy.  They all shared a bed in the motel rooms; John didn’t want to be farther than an arm’s reach from his boys, and neither he nor Dean wanted Sam anywhere near a crib.  So Sam had gone into the middle of the bed, John clutching the edge on one side, and Dean on the other, Bear clutched tightly under the arm gripping the mattress.

The night after Bear was lost, Dean had moved closer to Sam in his sleep, searching for something to hold onto.  And that’s how they stayed for the next five years, Dean and Sam, completely inseparable, even in sleep.

It hadn’t helped that John grew increasingly distant; even John understood why Sam took his first steps toward Dean and not him.  John was gone more often than not, seeking demons and finding new ones.  He had taken it upon himself to provide the emotional support his father simply couldn’t.  Dean made sure Sam ate and gave him his bath and read him a bedtime story.  Dean had been the one to show him how to color inside the lines and tie his shoes and aim for the toilet.

And then Dean had snuck away to play video games while they were staying in Fort Douglas; he’d taken a few hours to himself, just like all parents need, and everything had changed.

After that night, John trusted Dean a little less, treated him a little more harshly, and never looked at him the same.  John slept in the middle now so as to keep a better eye on Sam.  Dean tried not to blame him; Sam was the one they’d almost lost twice.  It was never Dean in danger; it was always he who put others there.

By the time the boys were old enough to warrant getting a room with two beds, it was Sam on one edge, Dean on the other, and Dean’s broken heart somewhere in the middle beneath the pillow between them.

There are still times Dean wonders why he was never the one his father threw a protective arm over, but he always feels selfish and sick to his stomach immediately, then turns the radio up louder, and promises he’s fine.

Lies, lies, lies.

The only time he’s been fine since Hell was in Lisa’s bed.  It hadn’t been love between them, but Ben needed a father, and they worked well together as a family, and neither he nor she wanted to be alone.  Lisa had always innately understood what Dean needed, too.  The first weekend they had ever spent together was the first time he’d surrendered control to someone else in the bedroom; the first time he’d been the little spoon after; the first time he’d felt himself fall into place.

Lisa provided comfort in a way no one else ever had.  She knew how much Dean needed to let go, and she accepted it; encouraged it; reveled in it.

There were times where she’d just silently pull him toward her at night, Dean lost in the middle of some horrible dream.  (Dean’s never figured out why his subconscious decided to wait until just after checking into the Elysian Fields Hotel to remind him of Hell.  He finds it both unwelcome and horribly ironic.)  He’d gratefully curl into her arms and refuse to cry and just let her run her fingers through his hair until he finally fell back to sleep.  Some nights were an endless cycle of nightmares and comfort.  Dean still has no idea why she put up with it.

There were also days where the nightmares lingered and Dean felt tortured during the daylight.  Those nights were the ones where Lisa would pull him over her knees and spank his ass red and sore until he was a shivering mess in her lap, until he felt a pain he could be proud of, until he felt cared for and safe beneath hands that bruised and soothed and praised in equal measure.  He slept best those nights.

And there were times, too, where they would get as close as they dared to making love, where he’d kiss and lick and nip and suck all over her body, nestle his face in the valley of her breasts, work a hand between their bodies to rub at her clit while he slowly rocked into her, feeling her clench around him as he brought her to climax again and again until he could hold off no longer and came himself, both of them panting and sweating and smiling.

He was the little spoon afterwards then, as always, but those nights left him sleepless.

Dean was never sure why before; by all accounts, he should have been exhausted and slipped easily off to sleep.  Now, after reading the second chapter of _[Being Dean Winchester](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051),_ he suspects a certain amount of unrealized jealousy kept him awake.  It makes him feel self-centered all over again, like he’s still nothing more than a child seeking endless, unfaltering affection.  She took care of him, so it would have been unfair not to reciprocate.  And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it, because he finds a strange sort of peace in the pleasure of others by his own hand.  If she enjoyed him and what he chose to give her, and if he enjoyed the giving, why couldn’t that be enough?

**Because you want to _give up,_ Dean.  You don’t want to be in control; you don’t want to switch on and off; you just want to _let go._  That’s why every time you try to take the reigns, you fail.  That’s how you ended up with me, remember?  Because you can’t manage all by your little lonesome.  It’s so much nicer to follow someone else’s lead, isn’t it?  That’s all I’m offering to you, Dean—my understanding and acceptance of who you are, even the parts you can’t recognize.**

_“Carrying your parasitic ass has nothing to do with my sex life.”_

**Being made to serve isn’t shameful, Dean, nor is it inherently sexual.  It’s a precious gift.  It’s a normal albeit _human_ desire, wanting someone to take care of you, to give you what you need.  There’s no fault in craving direction from someone with your best interest at heart.**

_“You sound suspiciously like you’re trying to be helpful, and I ain’t buying it.”_

**But I _do_ want to help you.  Father was an excellent instructor in what not to do, and now that I know every inch of your soul?  I make you the same promise I made Sam:  I will never, ever lie to you.  If I tell you I can grant you peace, then I will.**

**Besides all of that, you gave me your consent to guide you the moment you accepted the Mark.  And didn’t you feel better when I was in the saddle before?  When I was the one who spurred you on to glory?  When you didn’t have to think?  When all that existed for you was pain and pleasure and the lovely line that weaves in between?**

_“I got that from Lisa, and it didn’t hurt anybody, not like giving in to you would.  Not like it did.  I can get what I need from someone else.”_

**Mmhmm, of course you can, and then you can have their minds cleansed, too, and pretend like it didn’t matter, like no one’s been hurt.**

Dean’s greatest regret is the erasure of himself from her mind and from Ben’s, but mostly hers, because she’s the one person to ever make it past his walls and pull him out of the house fire in his brain that’s never stopped burning.

**Aw, are you introspecting again?  If you do happen to be thinking yourself along circuitous routes, doesn’t what you did seem suspiciously like rape to you?**

_“The fuck are you talking about?  I would never—”_

**You convinced your poor misguided guardian to angel-roofie chunks of her life away, Dean.  See?  You were in control, and you made a very bad choice.  You’ve been a very naughty boy all along, haven’t you?**

_“No.  No, that’s wrong.  That’s not what it was like, at all.”_

**Of course it was.  You can’t lie to me.  I am the truth and the way and the light, and that makes me everything you’re afraid of.  Why is it sinners prefer to run toward ruin when the true path to salvation offers them the freedom from themselves that they crave?  They called you a righteous man, you know, but the two of us?  We know better.  We are the monsters our fathers made us out to be, aren’t we?**

And it’s too much to process, like everything else in his life, but Dean can’t shut out Lucifer like he can shut down himself.  Dean has to listen to the honest onslaught, and it’s so easy to accept the honey straight from the comb, to drown in it, to let it wash over him like the mercy it must be.

“It’s true,” he says to his hands.  “It’s all true.”

**_Yesss,_ that’s right, you’ve been _very_ bad, Dean Winchester.  You’re sure of it like nothing else in your poor battered brain.  You’ve done such terrible things when left to your own devices, and you want so badly to be punished for them.  I suppose Mommy will have to spank y—Oh, but you couldn’t even manage to save your surrogate, could you?  Now there’s no Mommy to correct you, at all.  A horrible, useless, _wretched_ little lost boy, indeed.**

**Aren’t you, Dean?**

Lucifer’s laughter pounds against the inside of his skull as Dean practically runs out of his room and down the hall to Sam’s, toward safety and the refuge of the lie.  Dean knows the Mark won’t speak when Sam’s nearby.  The Mark lies in wait for the day Dean finally loses his self-control, the day that Sam’s blood in his veins isn’t enough to keep him human anymore.  It doesn’t want Sam to know what it is—not yet, at least—because that takes all the fun out of the chase.

No, Lucifer wants to wait until Dean’s given up all pretense and confessed the sum of his sins before he retakes his new vessel and chases the old one around with a hammer again.

And Dean knows that, next time, the two of them won’t miss.

**And then it will be just you ruled by the curse of my Mark, and me in my very favorite suit!**

**If nothing else, Father did always give me the best toys to play with.**

Dean tries to open the door to Sam’s room as quietly as he can, but the door creaks and slams just like before.  Sam jerks awake, eyes blinking rapidly as he jerks Ruby’s knife out from underneath his pillow and holds it in front of him defensively.

“It’s…”  Dean swallows.  “It’s just me.”

Sam lowers the knife and breathes in relief.  “Sorry.  Just reflex, you know.”

“No, I, uh.”  Dean closes his eyes, his hands balled into fists at his side, the knuckles white.  “I understand.”

“Everything alright?” Sam asks as he purposefully sets the knife beneath the bed.  Dean knows that Sam is trying to show that he trusts him, but Dean’s heart is still broken from the fact that Sam needed it under his pillow in the first place.

“No,” Dean finally says.

“You want to read in here after all?”

Dean doesn’t trust his words, so he just nods.  He wants to sit in the bed, next to Sam, but stops halfway through his approach.  “Can I…  Is it okay?”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just scoots over toward the wall, placing even greater distance between himself and Ruby’s knife.  When he says, “I’m gonna go back to sleep though,” and then adds, “Just wake me up if you need me,” Dean relaxes a little.

 _He’s not scared of me,_ Dean thinks.   _He’s scared of You._

There’s no reply, so Dean sits down on the bed, props himself up on a pillow, and goes back to reading.

* * *

When Sam wakes up again, it’s still not because he wants to, but because Dean is shaking him awake.  Sam tries to bat his hand away like he did when they were kids and Dean was trying to get him up for school.  “Five more minutes, Mom,” he sleepily mutters, knowing Dean will get the joke, since he’s made it so many times before.

“Sam,” Dean says, a slight tremor to his voice, “Sammy, please wake up.”

And, at that, Sam does.  He rolls over onto his back, rubs his eyes with his fists, and blinks up at Dean, who’s leaned back and is sitting against the pillows once more.  Dean looks haunted, Sam thinks.  Withdrawn.

“What’s up?” asks Sam, sitting up now himself.  He has to pull his legs up to his chest as he leans against the wall to face Dean, because there’s nowhere else for them to go.

Dean meets his eyes, and shakes his head.

“Dean, you’ve got to talk to me,” Sam says, concerned.  Dean hasn’t been this shaken since the conversation they had about his time in Hell years ago.  Sam puts a hand over Dean’s arm, and Dean jumps like Sam’s poured whiskey in a wound the minute he touches him.  “Is it the Mark, or did something you read bother you?”

Dean nods, jaw tensing.

“Which one?”

“Yes,” says Dean.  “Both.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I can’t,” Dean answers with a rough voice.  He looks down at his hands folded over the fanfic on his lap.  “I want to but I…”  Dean looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes.  “Sam, I _can’t._  I don’t want to lie to you, and I’m not, I swear, but you gotta believe me when I tell you I can’t talk about the Mark.”

“Dean, it’s okay,” says Sam quietly.  “I believe you.  You’re telling me it’s bothering you instead of hiding it or telling me differently, so I believe that, when you can, you’ll talk about it.”

“I will,” Dean says, “I swear I will.  Just…  Not yet.”

“Can I at least ask if it’s getting worse?”

Dean makes a small scared sound in the back of his throat, closes his eyes, and nods once.

Sam cautiously moves to hold Dean’s hands before he asks, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t wanna be alone,” Dean chokes out.  “I’m sick of being alone.  I’m sick of settling for what I have instead of what I want.  I’m sick of pretending that what we have is a family because it’s not.  It’s not.”  Dean lifts his head and stares at Sam, a tear slipping down his cheek.  “When was the last time we were brothers, man?  I mean actually acted like brothers?  Like we _cared_ about each other, not just desperately clung on while the world burned to the ground around us?  We say we’re brothers, but we don’t act like it until it’s almost too late not to.  When did that happen to us, Sammy?  Why did that happen?”

Sam’s too stunned to talk, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s like a dam’s burst in Dean and, for once in his life, he can’t stop the words from tumbling out.

“We used to prank each other.  We used to talk about more than the case.  We used to do shit together, you know?  And I mean we never talked about emotions or all that fucking nonsense, but we didn’t have to.  We just knew, because there weren’t lies coming out of our mouth every other sentence.  We used to do more than clap a hand on each other’s shoulders.  We touched, not like in a weird way, but just…  Y’know, we let each other know we were _there._

“And now,” Dean says, looking pointedly down at his hands, “now you’re touching me, but it’s only because you’re afraid I’m gonna die, or turn back into a demon any minute.  I don’t get it.  Why can’t we appreciate each other for being _alive?_  I’m so scared to touch people, because no one ever wants to touch me, and I fucking miss it.  Fuck, I hugged Cas in Purgatory and it took him until the Mark was eating me alive to hug me back.  And then the next time it was just to keep me from—”  Dean’s voice breaks, but he forces himself to continue.  “To keep me from hurting you.

“You know when the last time we hugged was, Sam?” he asks.

“I can’t remember,” Sam answers, and he feels like he’d rather melt into the floor than say it, because he’s so ashamed of himself.

“It was when you were gonna close up Hell.  It was when you were dying.  And that’s such…”  Dean bites his lip, then forces out, “It’s such _bullshit._  I don’t know when we decided we couldn’t touch each other, but it’s _killing me._  The past few days, since we saw that goddamn musical, have been great, because it’s the first time we’ve really acted like brothers in years, but I just keep waiting for us to go back to being mad at each other, and shit, Sam, I’m so sorry.  I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Why?”

“The whole Gadreel thing.  I couldn’t let you be dead, not just because you’d be fucking dead, but because it would have been worthless.  You were gonna die if you closed Hell, and then suddenly you were dying because you didn’t, and I couldn’t stand it.  But that should have been your call, Sammy,” and Dean pulls his hands away from Sam and clutches the sides of his face instead.  “That was your choice and not mine, even if the docs were looking to me to pull the plug, and _I’m sorry._  I’m sorry for doing it, and for not saying that I was sorry, and for holding the whole not-looking-for-me-in-Purgatory thing over your head for so long because I get it, Sam.”

“What do you get?” Sam asks, his hands lying on top of _[Being Dean Winchester](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051)._

Dean inhales shakily before he continues.  “I get wanting comfort.  I get wanting out.  I get wanting to find and stay with someone who helps heal the nightmares.  And it wasn’t right for me to hold it against you.”

If Sam was stunned before, he’s absolutely floored now.  “Thank you,” is all he manages to say, and that barely makes it out of his mouth.

“At the end of this,” Dean says, releasing Sam’s face and looking down at the fanfic, “at the end of this I see me and Cas in this cabin, and Cas and I just accept that normal isn’t something we’ll ever get.  That love is something that living the life, that hunting doesn’t afford.  And that’s bullshit, too.  We shouldn’t have to sacrifice happiness to give everyone else a fucking chance.  We shouldn’t have to deny ourselves the chance to be happy in order to save the fucking world every fucking year.

“I’m just,” and Dean finally stops to take a breath, his shoulders sagging as he exhales.  “I’m just so tired, Sam.  I’m tired of being mad at each other, and keeping you at arm’s length, and hurting all the time.”  His voice breaks and tears crowd the corner of his eyes as he adds, “I’m tired of no one loving me back until it’s too late.”

“Dean—”

“It hurts,” Dean cries, “Sammy, it hurts, the Mark _hurts,_ and I just want someone to hold me like they can make the pain go away.”

And Sam does, because what else could he do?  Sam pulls Dean into his arms and holds him while he cries, completely bewildered.  They eventually wind up lying down, because Dean hurts, and Sam hurts, and God, they’re _both_ tired.

Eventually, Dean stops sniffling into the pillow, and Sam’s arms loosen a little around him, and they both fall asleep like that, comfortable with each other like they haven’t been in years, Dean guarding the edge of the bed and Sam guarding his back.

For the first time in more than two decades, they sleep next to each other with no space or words between them.

* * *

Two gather in the afternoon, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“Well,” Sage says after the words stop appearing on the document.

“---- ----?” asks the Conductor.

“I mean, bravo for getting them to talk about feelings without the world coming to an end, but…”

“----?” the Conductor asks again.

The Sage hesitates before posing a question herself.  “Didn’t that feel a little bit, I don’t know, ‘every canon-compliant Wincest fanfiction ever written’ to you, Cee?”

“-’- ---- ----- ----- --- ----- ----- --.”

The Sage’s eyes narrow.  “Don’t you dare quote Robert Singer at me.”

“-----,” the Conductor apologizes.

“I’d also like to point out, as you’ve apparently forgotten,” begins the Sage, “that this is a Destiel fanfic.  Where the hell is the -stiel, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“---- -- --- ----?”

“Castiel, Cee.  Where is Cas?”

The Conductor pauses.

 ****  
  
  
  


“...----.”

“You forgot?” the Sage asks, incredulous.  “You’re writing a story where there will eventually be hot angel-on-hunter action—a story, I might add, that had better be less than a hundred thousand words—and you _forgot about the angel?”_

The Conductor flicks their Bic once with an incredibly sheepish grin.

The Sage sighs.  “So when do you have Cas scheduled to show up?”

“--- -- ----.”

“Not that it actually matters,” the Sage mutters, “since I’m sure you’ll find something to wax philosophic on and lengthen the outline further.”

The Conductor pulls up five Notepad files and scans them each carefully before saying, “--.”

“Um?  Why um?  When does Cas show up, Cee?”

“------- ---?” the Conductor hopes.

“Ten,” repeats the Sage in disbelief.

“-----?”

“Wow,” says the Sage.  “Congratulations.  You are actually worse at including Castiel than the show. I mean, what is he even off _doing_ right now?”

The Conductor looks genuinely frazzled when they answer, “----- -----?”

“Oh my God, you have no idea, do you?”

“--- ------, --.”

“You should probably try and work him into the next chapter before you have subscribers knocking at your inbox with torches and pitchforks.”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles very nervously.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam wakes up to an empty bed but a heart that’s strangely full.  He stretches into the free space beside him, causing an arm and a leg to dangle slightly off the side of the bed.  It was a cramped way to sleep, but it’s undoubtedly the best sleep Sam’s had in a long time.

As he stands up, though, he thanks whoever’s looking out for him that he hadn’t woken up with an erection.  His life is bound to be increasingly awkward as he and Dean see this fanfiction project to its end.  No need to help matters.

Sam opens the door to his room, and the first thing that hits him is the pervasive smell of cooking pork.  He sighs; this can only mean that Dean’s dark storm cloud of Feelings is still hanging around.  Sam had hoped that maybe opening up would have helped dispel some of the gloom rather than violently propelling him in the opposite direction.  Granted, considering how heavily the Mark seemed to be weighing on Dean, Sam figures he should be grateful that Dean had talked about his pain at all instead of shutting down even further.

He knows it’s out of character for his brother to break down, but Sam can’t  say he’s surprised that it finally happened.  And, while he hates to phrase it such, because it’s obvious how horrible Dean is feeling, Sam’s honestly glad that he did.  It was a breakthrough moment, for both of them.  God knows Sam’s tried, but it had been hard to completely let go of that resentment toward Dean for guilting him for living, or at least trying to.  Sam hadn’t been upset with Dean for not trying to pull him out of the Cage; sure, Sam didn’t spend a year there, or even four months like Dean had, but how could Dean have possibly known that?

It isn’t like Cas would have told him, especially not after Cas had rescued Sam back in pieces.  Sam hates that he still sometimes wonders if it was on purpose.  Cas had rescued his brother from Hell largely unscathed.

Well, that wasn’t true, but Dean at least _had his soul._

Regardless, Sam has never once reminded Dean of the fact that he didn’t go looking for Sam, because it didn’t bother him that he hadn’t.  He’d asked Dean to find and live an apple pie life, and for once, Dean had actually kept a promise.  Sam had been so proud of him once he’d had a soul to feel with again.

Thank God for the apparent _deus ex machina_ that Death had become in their lives.

Sam wonders, not for the first time, what it feels like to sit on the flip side of the mortal coin.  Not to be dead—though, to be fair, he’s wondered that plenty of times—but to be Death.  To wield the power of gods over gods.  He and Dean may have killed gods in their time, to be sure, but it wasn’t quite the same.

The reaper was the greatest hunter of them all, and Sam would sit and pick his brain for hours if he could.  He’s wanted to ever since they spoke in Sam’s own.  The knowledge that the greatest force in the universe had come to personally collect him is one of the most humbling things that Sam has ever learned.  Sam’s not entirely sure what would have happened to him if he had gone with Death, given that Heaven was closed, but he would have been perfectly content to just stay in that cabin and chat for the rest of eternity.

That likely isn’t a natural desire, but Sam is well aware of how…   _Not_ natural he is by now.

**Seriously?  You just had to work that in there, didn’t you?**

Sam leans slowly out of the doorway and looks up the hall.

Clear.

He looks down the hall.

Also clear.

**\----.  --- - ----- --- -- --- ----?**

**Yeah, he just stood in the doorway introspecting for a solid five minutes.**

Sam looks down at his bare feet, then around at the doorjambs.  Yes, he is, in fact, still standing in the doorway.

* * *

The Sage pushes herself away from her desk, propelling her rolling chair back with her feet until she hits the bed and stops.  She tries to keep going anyway.

“Uh, Cee?” the Sage says, the chair leaned back as far as it will go as she gropes blindly for a blanket.

“---------?”

“Is he supposed to be able to hear us?”

The Conductor st

  
  


“Cee?” calls out the Sage, huddling under a blanket.  “Cee, why are the fictional characters hearing the real people?  What did you do?”

“- ---’- ----,” the Conductor finally says, “--- -’- --- ----.”

“Wait, which question are you answering?”

“----,” clarifies the Conductor.  “----, --- --- --- ------- --?”

 _“I don’t know.”_  The Sage giggles in lieu of crawling under the bed and hyperventilating in a panic.  “Is this what happens in Advancement?  The King and Queen were remarkably unforthcoming with that information.”

“------ ----,” says the Conductor, “-- ---------- ---- --- ----.”

The Sage slowly inches her way back toward her laptop.  “Okay.  Assuming this is a normal side effect of playing the Game, and that this is what happens when the Queen encroaches on our territory, what happens next?”

“-- --------- - -----.”

“Can we lose the Progenitor?”

“--,” the Conductor says, “-- ----- ---- ---.  -- --- -- -- --- -----.”

“Dammit.”  The Sage picks up her coffee mug, appraises its emptiness, and sighs.  “I liked those two.  Not to mention that someone’s probably going to accuse you of fridging in the comments.”

The Conductor nods sadly.

“But seriously, is he going to hear us talking every time we move a piece?  And why Sam?  You still haven’t explained that part to me.”

The Conductor opens their mouth, hesitates, and closes it again.  They pull out their phone and begin to compose a message.

“While you’re skirting the Scoresheets,” the Sage begins, picking up her coffee mug again, “we have a free square just to the left of—oh, thanks for the refill.”

“---’- ------- --,” say the Conductor, momentarily pausing their typing.

“Anyway, I looked at the Board last night and there’s a space next to the Knight where we can move the Bishop.  It will also expose the two pawns in question to capture by the Queen.  And the Queen is certain to take the bait because it brings them three moves away from check.”

The Conductor pauses again.  “----- -- --- ----- -- ------?” they ask.

“It’s in the punishment toilet.”

The Conductor blinks incredulously.

“No one goes in there!  It seemed the most practical location.  And we both know that the attic’s off-limits.”  The Sage shudders.  “Never know who’s going to pop in.”

“---- -----.”

The Sage’s phone finally alerts her to a new text message.  “‘Sam is special,’” she reads aloud.  She repeats it silently a few times to herself.  “That’s all you’re going to tell me?  Really, Cee?”

“---.”

“Come _on,”_ the Sage whines, “give me _something_ to work with.  I’m betaing this clusterfuck of a tale, so you owe me that much.”

“--,” says the Conductor, petulant and bratty.

“Is it a Sam!person thing?”

“--.”

“A Sam hater thing?”

The Conductor huffs.  “--- ---- -- --- ---- -- -- ------ ---- ---------.”

“So you’re going to make me move the physical pieces, make me move Sam, but not tell me why he can overhear our conversation about moving said pieces?” the Sage asks, incredulous.  “Because that’s patent bullshit.”

“- ---’- ---- ---- ------- -----------,” the Conductor says quietly.

The Sage hesitates, then says, “We’re both in too deep and you know it.  You’re going to have to move me eventually.”

The Conductor bites their lip and, again, says nothing.

There’s a few minutes of silence before the Sage asks, “Did Sam just hear all of that, too?”

“--,” the Conductor replies, reopening the Google Doc and holding down the backspace key on their keyboard.  “--’- ---- ----- -------.”

“It’s not deleting,” says the Sage.

“-- -- --- ---,” replies the Conductor with a devious smile.

* * *

Sam stands in the kitchen next to Dean at the stove, slightly confused.  He struggles to remember his walk here, but his head hurts too much to think.  Sam feels like he’s moving through a fog, dazed and dizzy; it’s as if the world is spinning around him, but he’s spinning, too.  Everything seems…  Off.  Out-of-place.

Unreal.

“You feelin’ okay, Sam?” Dean asks in a clipped tone.  He sounds as if he’s speaking from the end of a long tunnel, echoing and distant.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “I think I just need to sit down.”

He takes a seat at the kitchen table and squints as he looks around the room, trying to make his surroundings come into focus.  It’s like he’s wearing glasses that have been handled too often and are graced with a permanent series of smears and smudges.  He blinks, once, twice, then rubs the corners of his eyes with his fingers.

Hearing is the first missing sense to fully right itself.  Sam listens to the sizzling of the frying pan, to the sputter of the coffee pot in mid brew.  Dean’s voice becomes more clear, and he’s muttering to himself occasionally, but largely silent.  Suddenly, Dean swears, and then Sam hears the scrape of a metal spatula against a metal pan and realizes that Dean must have burned whatever it is he was cooking.

Sam’s aware now of the smoke in the air.  He smells carbon and scorched meat, nearly drowning out the scent of the too-strong-for-his-tastes coffee.  He takes a deep breath anyway, hoping the sudden shock will reorient him, and it does, even though the world itself remains blurry.

He remembers standing in the door to his room now, because Sam smells the bacon and it prompts him to ask, “How are _you_ feeling, Dean?”

“I’m in a shitty fuckin’ mood, Sam,” he replies.  “Thanks for askin’.”

“Still upset by the story?” Sam asks, though he knows the answer already as his sight finally clears.  Granted, he didn’t need to see the slump of Dean’s shoulders and the tension in his hands to know; Dean’s dropping the “g”s of his words, which means he’s likely blending words together, too, and that’s clue enough.

Dean sighs as he dumps one skillet in the sink and pulls another off of a hook hanging on the wall over the stove.  “Sorta.  I mean, not over the same stuff.  I’m mostly just…  I dunno.  Confused by what I read, I guess.”

“What part’s confusing you?”

Dean stops, can of nonstick spray poised over the pan.  He turns around slowly to look at Sam, leaning back against the counter, hands never changing position.  Dean tilts his head and narrows his eyes, and Sam can’t help but think of Cas, and briefly wonders what other habits of each other’s they’ve picked up.

Speaking of Cas, Sam just-as-briefly muses as to where he is and what he’s up to.  Has…  Has he remembered to call him?  When was the last time they spoke?   _Shit._

“Sam,” begins Dean in his patented what-the-actual-Hell-have-you-done-now voice, interrupting Sam’s sudden guilt, “have you read it?”

“Of course,” Sam says, because fuck it, if they’ve adopted the honesty system, then he’s not backing down now.  Sam considers this the second test; they survived the Feelings Confessional, after all.  Navigating the Masturbatory Fantasy Minefield shouldn’t be too difficult.

Dean’s grip tightens on the skillet handle.  He reaches behind him and sets the aerosol can down; he aims for the counter, but it topples over into the sink, anyway.

“Sam, you tellin’ me that you read about fictional me and fictional Cas havin’ fictional sex?”

Sam swallows.  “I am committed to this case and our monster of the week,” he replies.  Sam’s surprised at how easy the words are coming.  He feels uninhibited, like he’s practiced this conversation in the mirror already and he’s only regurgitating his lines.

 **Oh, because Dean with an accent wasn’t enough, Cee,** echoes the voice in between Sam’s ears.   **Now I have to worry about Sam’s self-actualization.  Thank.**

“Sam?”

“What?  Oh.”  Sam shakes his head slightly in an attempt to clear his thoughts.  “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I was askin’ how _in-depth_ your research was.”

Dean’s unconsciously wielding the pan like a weapon now.  Sam’s starting to get a little worried, but it’s too late to backpedal now.  “I had to take every possibility into account.”

“Okay,” Dean concedes with caution.  “But you didn’t…  Y’know.”  He inches closer to the table and sets the skillet down behind Sam.  “Y’know,” Dean repeats, “You didn’t…”

Sam knows that, somewhere, there’s a mime crying over Dean’s explanatory gesticulations.

“Did you?” Dean asks again, leaning in as if to divine the truth from Sam’s pores.

“Um,” Sam manages, the truth well finally drained dry of words.

Dean leans back.  He blinks.

They stare at each other immobile, just breathing the same air.  In spite of the topic, it’s remarkably comfortable.  It’s familiar, because it’s what they’ve always done, all they’ve ever known.

Sam’s eyes flicker down to Dean’s lips before he can stop them.

Dean retreats a little farther and asks, in a voice full of bewildered accusation, “You do know we’re brothers, right, Sam?”

They make the same horrifically uncomfortable face and, after a few minutes enjoyable only to crickets, silently agree to table the subject.

“So,” Sam says.  “You said you were confused?”  Dean opens his mouth to object, but Sam overrules him.  “Look, you know I’ve read it, and I said I’d support you, so just let me play Socratic moderator and guide you through your crisis, okay?”

Dean hesitates, but nods his assent.

“Thank you.  Now, what passage seems to be causing the problem?”

Dean plants his forearms on the edge of the table, licks his lips nervously, then takes a deep breath.  “So all through this story—”

[ _“Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051) still?”

“Yeah, yeah, haven’t started anythin’ else yet.  But all through this story, I have flashbacks to Hell, right?  Which—”  Dean pulls his bottom lip into his mouth momentarily, furrows his brow, but presses on.  “—which I do have.  I remember Hell vividly, especially that last decade.  Shit, that last decade is just _etched_ into my memory.

“I remember all that, but I couldn’t even _recognize_ Cas when he showed up in that barn?  You’d think you’d remember the guy that saved your ass.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “but what did he save it for, exactly?”   _Wait.  Where did that come from?_ he suddenly, silently wonders.   _When did my filter stop working?_

Dean shakes his head.  “You have actual problems, Sam.”

“Shut it.  I haven’t gotten laid in over two years.  Frustration had to rear its ugly head eventually.  Fanfiction has provided an outlet, and, unfortunately, you and Cas have the starring roles.”   _Huh.  Well, when I put it that way—_

“Seriously, though,” says Dean after purposefully clearing his throat, “I never really thought about it before, but don’t you think it’s a little fuckin’ weird that I don’t remember meetin’ Cas in the Pit?  Makes actually zero sense.”

“So why don’t you ask him?”

Dean makes a choking noise that’s not quite a scoff, but certainly not a laugh.  "What, call him up, say, 'Heya, Cas, I've started readin’ these stories ‘bout us bein’ gross and dopey and takin’ care of each other and fuckin’ like rabbits and it gave me _feelings._  Can I ask you a few questions?'"

Sam shrugs with his face, angling his head forward slightly.  “It’s certainly a start.”

“Yeah, well, fuck that.”

Sam smiles a little.   _Typical Dean,_ he thinks, but he prompts, “I guess you'd rather read more fanfic, hmm?  Live vicariously?"

Dean looks like he wants to vehemently deny his attraction to fanfiction, but Sam knows far too well that it’s a battle Dean lost the minute he started reading.  Dean’s jaw tenses, and eventually, he forces a smirk.

“Maybe,” he says.

Sam’s grin widens, because Dean’s maybes are almost always yeses.  “Well, hop to it, then.”

“It’s just…” Dean starts but trails off, collecting his words before continuing.  “Readin’ it made me wonder if he looked after me like that, y’know; if he soothed my soul.  If he blocked shit out of my mind like he did in the story.  If there’s somethin’ ‘bout Hell still locked away."

 **I mean,** Sam’s inner voice continues like there’s been no intervening time, **at least you gave a reasonable explanation for it, what with bringing up his past muteness and then explaining that words have never come easy for him.  It follows that Dean might have a stress-induced speech impediment, which really is a decent, clever headcanon.**

**\----- ---.**

**But you are actually, actively killing me by making me proofread his dialogue, Cee.  I want to highlight everything and leave vague internal screaming at you in the comments.**

“Maybe you should take a break from the heavy mental lifting,” says Sam with a grimace.  He addresses Dean, but is somewhat suspicious that he’s started speaking to himself out loud.

“Oh fuck off, Sam,” says Dean, pushing himself away from the table forcefully enough to scrape the metal legs of the chair against the floor in a high-pitched screech.  He snatches the skillet from the table, storms the small distance over to the counter, and fishes the can of nonstick spray out of the sink.

“No, it’s not an insult,” Sam explains.  “I’m serious.  Read something fluffy.  Something that doesn’t make you call reality into question.”

He isn’t sure if Dean is listening or if he’s sunk back into his foul mood, trapped himself in his own feedback loop of self-loathing.  The sounds and smells of sizzling bacon have filled the kitchen again before Dean throws back over his shoulder, “So what would you suggest, you goddamn pusher?”

Sam laughs suddenly, caught off-guard, having been…  What had he been doing just now?  While he’s trying to recall, Sam shoots off the first title that comes to mind.

 _“[Words with](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790776)—”_ is all that makes it out of his mouth before he clamps it shut with his hand, a horrified glaze smoothing over his features.   _“[Coffee & Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844),”_ he amends, muffled beneath his palm.

Dean looks over at him.   _“Words with Coffee & Donuts?”_

“No,” says Sam, “just _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844).”_

“Sam—”

“Are we really having nothing but bacon for dinner?”

Sam’s ploy works, Dean sufficiently distracted by his own cooking again.  “It’s not like it’s all the same _kind_ of bacon.”

“But we’re seriously having three courses of primarily pork?”

“Hey, _all_ pies should have a bacon lattice on top!” Dean says, pointing at the dish cooling on an opposite counter with the spatula.  “Not my fault it’s not caught on.”

“I think you’ve actually got a cobbler there, Dean.”

“Yeah?  Well, I think you’re not actually getting any of it now.”

Sam snorts.  “You really do have an excellent mom voice.”

Dean turns around, and his smile reaches his eyes this time.  “Lots of practice, Sammy.”

Sam’s cell phone begins to ring.  Sam glances down at the pocket of his pajama pants.  When he looks back up at Dean, his bitchface is in full play.

“Lots of practice reprogramming phones, too.”

“‘Whip My Hair,’ Dean?   _Really?”_

“Shut your cakehole, Shotgun!” Dean calls out as Sam steps into the hallway to take the call.

Sam pulls out his phone to check the caller ID, and sighs as soon as he sees the name.

“What do you need, Maeve?” he says tiredly.

“Shut up and listen,” Maeve says, and Sam strains to hear her hissing whisper.  “I don’t have much time.”

Sam’s bitchface immediately drops.  “Are you in danger?”

“We all are,” she replies.  “Look, something big is going down, bigger than I ever realized, and there’s a veritable shit nor’easter about to blow in.  You have to stop reading _now.”_

“What?  Why?”

“Just box it all up and throw it in a safe room.  Give it a hunter’s funeral.  Send it to Pluto for all I care, but _you have to stop reading.”_

Sam frowns again.  “That’s not going to happen, Maeve.  Dean’s had a real moment of self-discovery.  I think you and Marie were onto something.”

“That’s just it, Sam,” says Maeve, “it’s not only us.  There’s at least seven others.  Maybe more.  A conspiracy worthy of Mulder and Scully.”

“What are you saying?”

Maeve makes a frustrated noise into the phone.  “I’m saying people’s lives are at stake, Sam!  The world as we know it is changing!”

“How?”

“Because it’s _transformative fiction.”_

Sam blinks.  “What, you mean like a cursed book?”

“Yes.  No.  Okay, I’m honestly not sure how it works,” Maeve confesses, “but Marie literally just disappeared in front of my face, and the last thing they said was that we were pawns, and pawns get sacrificed, and—“

The phone cuts out.

“Maeve?  Maeve, who’s ‘they’?   _Maeve?”_

“Sam?” Dean calls from the kitchen.  “Everything okay out there?”

“I’m not sure,” Sam says, walking back in, phone still in hand.  “That was Maeve.  She said Marie’s gone missing.  Something about us reading the fanfic being to blame.”

Dean finishes sliding his most recent batch of bacon from the pan to a paper towel-covered plate.  “How the fuck is that possible?”

“Maybe we didn’t get rid of Calliope?”  Sam leans back against the counter next to Dean so that he can look at his face.  “I don’t see a connection otherwise.”

“Y’wanna pack up and head out?”

Sam shakes his head.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea given…  Well.”  Sam looks at the Mark on Dean’s arm.

Dean’s gaze follows and he closes his eyes in defeat.  “Man, fightin’ is the only thing that makes the pain stop.”

“And that isn’t necessarily a good sign, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean finally agrees.  “You’re right.  I don’t like that you’re right, but you are.  Still, we can’t just sit here if they’re in trouble.”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline in sudden epiphany.  “We could call Jody!  She’s even closer to them than we are travel-wise, so she could make it there more quickly.  I’m sure she wouldn’t mind checking it out.”

“Doesn’t she have a full-time job?  Also a daughter with PTSD?”  Dean starts crumbling up some of the bacon and suggests, “Why not Krissy and her crew?  They’re even kids, they can infiltrate more easily.”

“That’s a solid point,” Sam says.  “You want to call them or should I?”

“Nah, I’ll do it.  Haven’t talked to her in few months, anyway.”

“You talked to her regularly?” asks Sam, shocked.

Dean huffs.  “Semi.  And don’t act so surprised.  I like to keep tabs on people.  Just didn’t think it was important to talk about, y’know, before.”  Dean stops and wipes his hands on a dishtowel.  “But if we’re doin’ this whole honest communication thing, then there.  Welcome to the loop.”

“Anyone else you talk to?”

“Garth, mostly.  Sometimes Tracy.”

“What about Cas?”

 **FINALLY,** shouts the voice in Sam's head.

Dean suddenly finds the pan intensely interesting.

Sam rolls his eyes a little.  “You never talk to him, do you?”

“So, uh…  You think we should stop, y’know, reading the fanfic?” Dean says, clumsily changing the topic.

Sam shakes his head.  “No, Dean.”

“No?”

“No,” Sam repeats.  “I think it’s imperative that we don’t.”

* * *

“That can’t be the end of the chapter,” says the Sage.

“--- ---?”

“Because that’s a horrible note to leave your readers with while you concentrate on your soon-due smut.”

The Conductor shrugs.

“Also, again, internalized Wincest.  Do you even know what you’re shipping anymore?”

The Conductor shrugs again, and the Sage throws her hands up in defeat.

“Subscribers are probably going to be more confused than they already were between that and Sam hearing us—which, fair, because it’s confusing _me_ —and you’re just going to abandon them while you write Destiel sexy times at the farmer's market?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like it says on the tin, I will be taking another short hiatus on this. I recently celebrated 400 followers on tumblr by accepting three fic prompts, and then, on Friday, I remembered that my [Summer Heat](http://destielsmutbrigade.tumblr.com/post/118484867785/destiel-smut-brigade-summer-heat-fic-compilation) fic for the [Destiel Smut Brigade](http://destielsmutbrigade.tumblr.com/) is due at the beginning of July.
> 
> There may have been a brief panic attack involved.
> 
> Anyway, I'm going to focus on those things for the next few weeks, and then we'll be back to our regularly-scheduled fandom fandom meta mindfuckery. Stay tuned!


	8. Chapter 8

They didn't write about the kinky beekeepers, after all.  The story was shelved for another day, left in the folder of future tales to tell.  No, they wrote fluff and smut and absolute crack; they tried to forget about what was to come; they watched the days and weeks pass without update.

Right now, they sit in front of their laptop, trying to decide if they should edit or redact what’s been published already.  The story’s wandered off into places they didn’t expect it to go.  There are elements to it that they originally thought too personal to include, headcanons that would be better served elsewhere.  The characters, which they so carefully planned the movement for, keep stumbling into unexpected scenarios.  Sometimes the dialogue is so wildly different from what they wrote months previous that it feels like they’re writing a different tale altogether.  As for the final act, the words fly loose in the wind, a tattered banner of rejected thoughts.

If it were an option, they'd call the King, tell him it's just too great a responsibility, that someone else should have been chosen.  Someone greater.  Someone stronger.  Someone more confident.

Someone who didn't trip over Writer's Block so frequently.

But there is no shoulder on the side of the road to pull off on.  No exits, no rest stops, and nothing but construction as far as they can see.  It is too late to turn back and, deep down, they wouldn't even if the opportunity were available.

They were warned it might come to this.  Any story given breath will eventually learn to breathe on its own.  It’s terrifying, and exhilarating, and exhausting.  They want to nurture it the same they would any of their work—though perhaps that example is a poor one as a certain story lies languished and neglected in the dust of a forgotten time.  Nevertheless, they want to see this fic grow, want to watch it stand Frankensteined and cobbled on its own two feet, the same appendages they once shaped for it.

If only they weren’t so attached to the Pieces.

If only there weren’t so many watching the Game.

If only it were easier to hurt that which is loved.

This is Advancement.  This is the precipice of the second act.  They must be prepared, not only for the scene to come, but for the rest of the show.

It takes four cups of coffee before they feel brave enough to open their notes.  There is a laugh planned, which they suppose is better than none at all.  They’ll need to look over the referred fanfic in question; perhaps they can find a way to coax the Winchesters into another joke or two after a reread of the inspirational material.  The Sage and Conductor will need to speak at some point, so they could inject some humor there, as well.  Otherwise, it’s going to hurt like shaving a hiatus beard and getting back to work.

_And that’s okay,_ they tell themselves.   _All growth comes with pain._

But the comments in the margins of the outline, the ideas scribbled across the pages of the notebook: they won’t be easy to write.  They’re hesitant to put them out for the public eye.  Maybe they aren’t ready to.  Maybe it hits too close to home.

Then again, maybe they could use a bit of growing, themself.  They always knew the story would be difficult, even before Dean—

_A time to laugh.  A time to cry.  Turn, turn, turn._

They can’t put it off much longer.  Their words are bubbling to burst, waiting to fly forth and form the next step of the story.  Better to do it now while the will remains.  Even if it’s a slow-going struggle, this is the challenge they signed up for.

And so, the Conductor refills their mug a fifth time, opens all the requisite documents, takes a deep breath, and begins to move the scenery into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about a third of a way through each of my last two prompt fics, so expect a longer update next time. And, though the next chapter may be a bit heavy on the angst, there are still plenty of wacky hijinks further down the road. :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to Betty for keeping my character bleed in check.
> 
> This is my first time writing a selectively-mute character. I did a great deal of background research, and hope I have written an accurate portrayal.
> 
> Trigger-warning for homophobia.

In the end, it isn’t reading about flirting with Cas or kissing Cas or, fuck, even _dating_ Cas that got to Dean during _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844)._  He likes thinking about touching Castiel, sure—and he’d definitely like to think more about that later—but right now he’s restless, confused, and concerned, and none of that has anything to do with either potential of fictional affection.

No, there were three issues that stood out to him when he finished _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844), _ and none of them have to do with Cas.

Dean feels queasy, not simply because the story has forced long-bottled emotions and memories to the front of his mind, but because he’d felt the need to bury them in the first place.  At its core, it’s similar to how he felt when he finished _[Being Dean Winchester](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051)._  Sure, that story had sex—and that had been more than descriptive—but it wasn’t reading about fucking Cas that had left Dean reeling.  Instead, it had been the knowledge that, in some fictional universe, he’d simply given up on being with Cas, on being happy, on acting on the things he felt.

Three may be a magic number, but Dean hates self-confrontation, and he’s never been keen on witchcraft.  He _is_ keen on the idea of eventually being happy with his life, however, so he’s trying something new—considering his feelings, and that means delving into his inter-related problems three.

If he’s going to defeat this emotional Cerberus that’s taken shelter beneath his skin, he’s going to have to lop off each head one by one, so Dean takes a deep breath and starts thinking.

The first issue exposed by _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844)?_  His inability to be open about himself.

> “‘Shit! No, no,’ Dean quickly corrected. ‘I’m bi.’”

Fake!Dean made it sound so easy, like being himself—all of himself—was perfectly acceptable.  Maybe it was; maybe queer donut shop owners were the norm in some alternate universe, but Dean’s never bothered asking any of them in his.

After reading the line, though, Dean had sat there on his bed for a good five minutes attempting to say it out loud for himself.   _I’m bi.  I’m bi.  I’m bi._  Like an alternative sexuality hippy commune mantra or some shit.  But the words wouldn’t budge from his throat.  He felt as if some cosmic external force was trying to coax them out of him, and God, Dean wanted to give in, wanted to say them, wanted to hear it in his voice.

Dean was taught a long, long time ago that being open wasn’t an option, however.  He learned very quickly that feelings were a curse; in their line of work, being anything but “normal” meant you were more likely to be remembered.  Hunters had to be as blase as possible, had to fit in easily to the Life.  That meant toeing the line, and living inside the box, and conforming to whatever environment he found himself in.

He inherited a store from John in this universe, too, that was for certain, but no building.  What Dean got instead was a store of personal, emotional issues and an absolute lack of resources with which to deal with them.

Which brought him to the second problem, one that hit entirely too close to home and had been what started this spiral downward into self-reflection when he read [_Being Dean Winchester_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2201850/chapters/4824051): the notion of being stuck.  Dean’s well-aware of the endless series of devil’s traps that compose his life.  It’s more than being mired in hunting and the acting and posturing and hiding that come along with it; more than an obligation to continue his father’s work; more than having nothing better to do than saving and breaking the world in the same breath every other month.

Truth is, Dean _likes_ hunting.  He’s good at it, damn good, like nothing else in his life.  Being a hunter is easy—well, it _used_ to be easy, before he and Sam and Cas cracked the egg for the first time and scrambled up their lives in apocryphal bunk of Biblical proportions.  You heard about a monster; you found the monster; you killed the monster.  See?  Easy.

He even likes the acting that comes along with putting on the cheap suit and flashing the fake badges.  It isn’t anything close to being on TV or in the movies (thank fuck for that, although he had enjoyed the catering on both sets he wound up on), because theatrics are his _reality._ Dean was carefully crafted into the character he sees in the mirror on a daily basis.

Well, before he broke the mirror, anyway.

Dean would rather break the _mould,_ because there are so many tasks Dean would prefer to perform in the morning beyond getting up in time to make the allegorical donuts.

He could still hunt if he was himself, the self that’s buried beneath the grease paint, he’s sure of it.  Being the person Dean’s been trained _not_ to be wouldn’t change his interests.  He’d still like listening to music too loudly, and eating too poorly, and collecting porn and fixing his car and bugging Sam.  Dean would still like plaid shirts and worn leather jackets and boots.  There would still be Vonnegut in his bag and Zeppelin in his tape deck.

But he might let Taylor Swift stay on the radio when Sam hopped into the passenger seat.  Maybe stop pitching his voice lower and lower with each passing year in an attempt to convince himself of his macho masculinity.  Fuck, if he was in the mood to, maybe he’d get caught reading _Cosmo_ once in a while.

Perhaps he’d be honest with himself and not just Sam, since they’re trying this whole truthfulness thing now.

And that brings Dean to the third problem: never saying what he means.  Even fake!Dean can’t help but lash out instead of talking to people.  He hurts fake!Cas because he can’t talk about what’s eating him up inside.  Fake!Dean can’t just ask fake!Cas about how he backed his business or afforded all the nice stuff.  He could have sidled his way into the conversation--”Hey, this is a nice apartment you have.  I really like ‘insert-name-of-hipster-decorative-piece’, where’d you get it?”  And fake!Cas would have said it was thrifted, and fake!Dean wouldn’t have felt so out-of-place and poor and the whole fucking passive-aggressive beanbag toss could have been avoided.  They’d have gotten to the bad puns and business agreements and Mexican food a lot goddamn faster.

That wouldn’t have made for such a compelling story, Dean supposes.  Besides, that’s real!Dean’s problem, too—not being able to fucking talk.  He could’ve solved a lot of shit himself by now if he could string two meaningful words together more than once a year.

It’s gotten better over time, sure, talking at all if not talking about what matters.  When Dean’s on a case, doing something he loves to do, talking is simple; it’s a job, he’s good at working, and he knows his shit.

Used to, though, when he was a kid, he could talk to his mom, or his dad, or, once he was in the picture, Sammy.  Talked to Sammy all the time, even when he couldn’t talk to Mary or John.  He could never refuse Sammy, at least, not until after the fire.

Before then, though, no one understood.  “Use your words,” his Nana Millie would say, like it was that simple.  Dean wanted to.  Really, he did.  He just didn’t like talking outside of the house.  His house was safe.

There were angels watching over him there, after all.

His words were sort of few and far between, anyway; even the ones he had were slightly garbled.  Dean remembers John and Mary fighting about it sometimes, usually after dinner, when they’d put him to bed and they thought he wasn’t listening.

 _“There’s something wrong,” Daddy said.  “Dean should be talking to people.  Hell, he should be talking_ period, _Mary.”_

_Mama replied, “My little boy is perfect.  He just likes to listen, that’s all.  He’s just quiet.  There’s nothing wrong with him.”_

_Daddy sighed.  “I’m not saying_ he’s _wrong.  But the doc might be onto something._ _His preschool teacher might be onto something._ _He only talks to us if the goddamn Spirit moves him, and he won’t even talk to_ us _if we go any farther than the yard.  It’s not right.  You know it’s not.”_

 _“He’s fine.  He’s_ normal,” _she insisted, and then, more quietly but with greater assertion,_ “We’re _normal._ ”

_“If you say so.”_

And Dean could never decide who was right, Mama or Daddy.  He _felt_ wrong, but that wasn’t about his words.  What made him really feel broken, even at four, wasn’t something he was supposed to talk about.

So he just… Didn’t.

He still doesn’t.

Dean knows there’s a fourth problem that [_Coffee & Donuts_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844) brought up, one that runs in water deeper than the aquifer can reach, but like hell is he going to meditate on that.  Yet he can’t stop thinking about cookbooks and baking and a sunny afternoon in July, and the way the tears crowded in the corner of Mama’s eyes when he told her everything would be okay.

**You know why she was crying, Dean.  All she wanted was a perfect family.  All she got was a perfect disappointment.**

Dean takes a shaky breath, pictures the Cerberus squirming in the dust, close to death.  He’s so close to taking it out, closer than he’s ever been.  Yet he can’t make the killing blow.  He doesn’t know how.

**Oh, yes you do.  You just don’t _want_ to do it, because you’re the monster here, Dean.  You’re the abomination.  You know it.   _She_ knew it.  You make that final cut, and all the Darkness will start spewing out, all the things you refuse to acknowledge, all the things that should never see the light.**

_You’re blowing shit out of proportion._

**Am I?  No, we both know that** **you’re afraid of yourself, Dean; you’re a coward.  You don’t want to end the hunt because you know you’ll find yourself in the belly of the beast.**

He wonders how drunk he needs to get before the Mark stops telling him the truth.

**There’s not enough whiskey in the world.**

_“I’ll figure out a way to make you shut up eventually, I swear.”_

**Nah.  You want it too much.  And you’re too easy of a target.  I’ll always keep finding tiny scabs and just picking and picking and** **—**

“Dean?”  Sam pokes his head into the kitchen.

 _Oh thank fuck._  “Good morning, sunshi—oh shit, Sam.”  Dean stares at him; Sam’s hair is wild and out of place, like he didn’t get all of the conditioner rinsed out before blow-drying.  He’s fairly sure Sam doesn’t even _own_ a blow dryer.  Maybe he pulled a Natasha Romanoff and found one in a guest bedroom, though that begs the question of where the fuck Steve Rogers is hiding.

Sam clutches his head and mouths something that looks suspiciously like, “Will you both please shut up?”

“Uh, Sam?”

Sam runs his hands through his hair once as he stands up, and the locks fall perfectly into place.  He mumbles, “Oh my God, who cares if they already talked about my hair earlier?”

“You okay there?” Dean asks.

“No,” says Sam, “No, I am definitely not okay.  I mean, look at me, Dean.”  Sam gestures at his shirt.  “I don’t remember the last time I changed clothes.  There’s a coffee stain down my sleeve, and this—”  He pulls the hem of his shirt closer to his face.  “—I think this is cheese?  And I don’t even remember the last time I _had_ cheese.  I can’t sleep because I can’t stop reading fanfic, and even when I _do_ stop reading fanfic, I’m thinking about it which makes the whole stopping thing seem pointless.”

Dean blinks.  “Maybe you should shower?  Do some laundry?  Lay off the crack?”

“This is probably why Maeve told me not to read them,” Sam says with a sigh, slumping into the seat at the table across from Dean.  “I guess my tendency toward addiction is well known in the _Supernatural_ fandom.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“Besides,” Sam continues, “I went to take a shower and saw that you’d broken one of the mirrors in the bathroom and figured I ought to come check on you.”

“Oh.  Yeah,” says Dean, shifting in his seat.  “Yeah, that was me.”

“Well of course it was,” Sam replies with a roll of his eyes.  “It certainly wasn’t the voices in my head.”

“The what now?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

Dean scowls.  “C’mon, Sam, you can’t do that anymore.  We’re telling the truth now, remember?”

Sam scrubs his hands down his face.  “Dean, you’re going to think I’m nuts.”

“I already think you’re nuts.  Comes with the job.  So spill it.”

“Ugh, fine, whatever.”  Sam scratches at his shoulder, dipping his fingers beneath the collar of his shirt.  His eyes move to the side, probably seeking the coffee pot and definitely finding it empty.

Dean looks at Sam pointedly when he doesn’t reply.  “You were saying?”

“There’s these... _People_ I keep hearing,” Sam says, getting up to make coffee, “and it’s like I’m listening in on their conversation.Well, sort of, at least.  There’s only one of them talking.”

Dean watches Sam rifle through the cabinet for coffee and asks, “Then how do you know there are two of them?”

“I can hear the other one, they’re just not saying anything.  It’s just a bunch of blank space.”  Sam finally finds the French roast and pulls it off the shelf.  “Driving me insane.  I mean, I can gather what’s being said from context clues.  Mostly.  But it’s the knowledge that there’s information right there that I’m not getting that’s driving me crazy.”

“That’s the only thing?”

Sam starts pouring water into the pot’s reservoir.  “It feels like a case, I swear.  I know there’s something going on.  There’s some reason I’m hearing these people, but I can’t figure out what it is.  Because they’re talking about us.”

Dean blinks.  “What about us?”

“What we’re doing,” Sam says.  “Like right now, the one with a voice is grumbling at the other one that they’re dangerously close to switching POV in the middle of a scene.  I think the silent one is writing a story.”

“So, what, Penn and Teller live in your brain now?”

Sam sighs.  “I don’t know.  But I’m going to need to find out sooner or later.”

“Well,” says Dean, trying not to look at the Mark, “as long as they aren’t telling you to do shit.  We’ve had to deal with much weirder stuff in your head.”

Sam barks a laugh.  “I suppose so.  I’ll let you know if it gets...I don’t know, mentally interesting in here?”

Dean shrugs and nods.  He watches Sam continue making the coffee.  The repetitive motion is calming—Sam scoops a tablespoon of coffee, uses a finger to level it (though it’s never quite level), and dumps it into the filter.  Scoop, level, dump.  Scoop, level, dump.  It lets Dean zone out a little, takes him out of his head, which he’s immensely grateful for.  He couldn’t even free himself from his brain long enough to reheat leftovers for breakfast, let alone concentrate to make coffee.

Once Sam’s done, Dean moves on to watching the coffee drip.  He fans the corner of [_Coffee & Donuts_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844) absentmindedly with his thumb, listens to the soft rustle of pages mixing with the sputtering ruckus of the coffee pot.

“Dean?”

He looks over at Sam, blinks, but doesn’t otherwise reply.

“You’re quiet today,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” says Dean, “I guess.”

“Something on your mind?”

 _Everything.  Anything.  Nothing.  Too much._  “I just don’t…”  Dean fidgets in his seat.  “I don’t…”

Sam frowns.  “You don’t what, Dean?”

**Yeah, Dean.  You don’t what?**

_Shut up._

“I don’t understand,” Dean says with a sigh, staring back down at the pages in his hand.

“What don’t you understand?” asks Sam as he starts rinsing a couple of mugs out in the sink.

**Go on.  Say it.  Tell him.**

Dean bites the inside of his cheek.   _I thought you weren’t gonna talk around him._

**Oh, because I’ve never broken rules before.**

Sam sets a cup of coffee down in front of Dean, slides back into the seat across from him.  “Are you okay?”

“In some of these stories...” Dean starts.  He stops, grabs his cup of coffee, and presses it between his palms.  It’s too hot, but the pain is grounding.  “In _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844),_ I’m, y’know.  Out.”

“Out?” Sam asks before taking a sip of coffee.  He scrunches his face up at the temperature, wrinkling his nose.

It makes Dean laugh, albeit nervously, and that’s grounding, too.  “Yeah, man.  Out.”

“Out of the closet, you mean?”

Dean closes his eyes and tries to think of a way to respond without really responding.

**You’re good at that.**

He ignores the Mark and answers with another question.  “Is that important?”

Sam blows at his coffee idly, eyes unfocused as he processes.  Dean knows that look; it means he’s planning out the conversation before he starts it.  That’s good.  Dean won’t have to think too hard about his answers if Sammy’s navigating him down the path.

**And you do try so often to avoid thinking too hard.  It’s just so much easier to let us do it for you, isn’t it?**

“It is kind of hard to write a male couple in a story if half of the couple isn’t into men,” Sam finally says.

“Well, yeah, Sam,” says Dean, rolling his eyes, “I figured that out, thanks.  But I mean like out here.  In reality.  Is being out really that important?  Does it matter?”

Sam gives him his best _is that an actual question?_ face.  “It is to a lot of people, Dean, yes.  Have you picked up a newspaper and read beyond the unsolved mysteries?”  He takes another sip of his coffee.

“But I—”

**Tell. Him.**

_What the fuck does it matter to you?  Why are you pushing this?_

**Consider it an act of desperation.  Not to mention for your own good.**

_And since when have you cared about me?_

**Since always, Michael.  Since always.**

Dean takes a deep breath.  “Am I supposed to be?  I mean, I still like the ladies.  I just might, sort of, be interested in dick.  Someone else's.  Not mine."  He scans back over what he’s just said and quickly adds, “I mean, I like mine, too, but—”

Sam smiles.  “Dean, it’s okay.  You’re bisexual.”

“Fuck, Sam, I know I'm bisexual.  I can Google."  Huh.  Apparently he can say it.

**Knew you could, champ.**

_Go the fuck away._

“So, wait,” Sam says, his giant smile melting into a puzzled frown.  “Why aren't you open about what you like?  I thought you just hadn’t realized you were bi.”

“I’m not stupid, Sammy,” Dean says very quietly.

Sam sighs.  “I wasn’t implying that you were.  But I can’t read your mind.”

Dean forces a grin and snorts a laugh.  “Use my words, right?”

“It would make this easier, yeah.”

**He’s right you know.**

_Shut.  Up._ Dean clenches his jaw, stares into the black void in his mug.

**Tell him everything and I will.**

_I don’t make deals._

**Yes, you do!  Literally _all the time!_**

“I mean,” Sam continues, well-meaning, “if you have these feelings, these attractions, proclivities, whatever you want to call them—or, well, _don’t_ call them—why not act on them?”

“It’s not that simple,” replies Dean.  Because it isn’t, and this conversation is heading quickly into Cerberus country.  Dean has to shut it down, and he has to shut it down now.  “I don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”

“No,” says Sam vehemently.  “No, it’s _not_ okay.  This is eating you up inside.  You’re hurting yourself, and you’re feeding the Mark.”

**He’s an astute little suit, isn’t he?**

Dean’s skin is crawling.  He feels clammy, too hot and too cold all at once.   _If this is helping you, then why do you want to stop it?_

**Because if I’m going to break you, then I want to break _all_ of you.  It’s more fun if you’re not already splintered into pieces.**

Sam wraps his fingers beneath the seat of his chair and stands up with it.  He shuffles, seat and all, to the adjacent side and plops down next to Dean.  Sam pries Dean’s hands off the coffee cup, holds them instead.  “You can tell me,” he says.

**Tell him.**

_No!_

“It’s nobody’s business but my own what I think about when I’m by myself,” Dean snaps, jerking his hand away from Sam.  His arm hits the coffee mug; it tips over and spills, coffee seeping into _[Coffee& Donuts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844),_ running across the table, dripping into the floor.

Sam jumps up and grabs the dish towel.  He starts mopping it up.

Dean just sits and stares at his hands.

“I don’t want anyone to think different of me,” he says brokenly.

Broken.  Always broken.

“Don’t worry, Dean, we’ll always know that you’re an asshole, no matter what else you might be,” Sam snarks from the floor.  Dean knows he’s trying to make him smile, but it honestly just pisses him off.

“Look, I don’t want people to think I’m weird or something, okay?  I don’t want some hot chick to get grossed out because I—”

“What, want to take it up the butt?”  Sam jabs at Dean’s leg with his elbow, a crooked smile plastered to his face, completely oblivious to the rising panic in Dean’s chest.

“—am interested in men, _Jesus,_ Sam.”   _Interested in them telling me I’m pretty, or beautiful, or gorgeous or_ _—_

**Anything but handsome.**

_Fuck, please, anything but handsome._

And that’s all it takes to slay the Cerberus guarding Dean’s memories.

_It’s July and Dean’s four years old and Mama’s standing in the kitchen making pie.  The sunlight streams through the windows and the white curtains, reflects off of her blonde hair, usually long and falling past her shoulders, but today wrapped up in a messy bun that’s fallen down to the back of her neck.  Dean can’t remember the color of her dress, but he knows the apron’s the same color as the dough on her fingers._

_The crust’s going to be perfect because, “The outside’s what people see first, Dean.  They see the outside, and they decide what the inside’s going to be like.  So the outside has to be right.”_

_Dean hops up on the kick step next to Mama, watches her kneed the dough and teach it how to be right.  She hums to it as she works, folk songs like “City of New Orleans” and old hymns Dean can never, ever remember all the words to, crumbling through his memory like Mary’s methods to making pie._

“But why do you care what some anonymous, faceless, potential woman might think?”  Sam’s voice filters in like the sunshine.  Dean can hear it somewhere over Mama’s shoulder.

_“Say Bar’s preddy?”  Dean tugs on Mama’s sleeve, basks in her smile and the turn of her head and her eyes on him.  He thrusts Bear up at her with his free hand as she washes hers under the faucet._

_She laughs and says, “Bear, you’re very pretty.”_

_Dean grins.  “Say_ I’m _preddy?”_

_Mama closes her eyes and swallows hard.  “You’re a very handsome little boy.”_

“Should I not care what women think about me?” he asks Sam.

_“Den says I’m a preddy boy,” says Dean.  “He hel my han an tol me.”_

_And Mama’s mouth turns upside down and brings the storm to her eyes._

Sam throws the towel into the sink.  Dean hears it thud wetly against the stainless steel.  “No,” Sam insists, “you shouldn’t.”

_“You can’t say things like that, honey,” she tells him, wet hands gripping his shoulders as she crouches down to look him in the eyes._

_Dean’s brow furrows._ _“Daddy says you’re preddy when he holes your han.”_

_“That’s different,” Mama tells him.  “Girls are pretty, and boys are handsome.  Boys tell girls they’re pretty, and not other boys.”_

_“Buh Den--”_

_“I don’t care what Dylan said,” says Mama tiredly.  “Dylan’s wrong.”_

“Why not?” asks Dean.  His voice cracks like his crust does.

“Because you shouldn’t be worried about impressing anyone!  I mean, you practically have a fucking boyfriend, Dean!” Sam shouts, exasperated.  “You have no _reason_ to chase easy lays.  You could have exactly what you want, but you're too dumb to notice!”

_“Buh we play house,” Dean insists.  “I make dinner an pie.  Lie you, Mama.”_

_“You’re a boy, Dean.  Boys don’t play house with boys.  That’s wrong.”_

_Dean looks at Bear, deep in thought.  “I can make dinner an pie for Zoo?”_

_“No, Dean.  You’re a boy.  You don’t stay home.  Sue stays home.”_

_“Buh why?”_

_Mama covers her face with her hands.  “Because you’re a normal boy, and normal boys do things like play with trucks and blocks.  They don’t like pink, and they don’t play with dolls, and they don’t put on dresses when they play make-believe.  Those are girl things.”_

“You're so caught up in yourself and your ladykiller facade that you've completely ignored the man you make goo-goo eyes with whenever he's in the room,” Sam continues.

Dean can’t tell if Sam’s yelling anymore or not.  He’s too busy drowning.

“Shit, it's not like you're going to be dressed for Pride.  Who's going to know you’re bi unless you tell them?  And it’s not like you're going to see any of them again even if you do.  All you pick up are barflies.  You love 'em and leave 'em, right?  The patented Winchester way.”

Dean feels himself nodding as he screws his eyes shut.  That’s exactly what he does.  Always the _adiós_ , though no one in the arrangement travels any closer to God.

No attachments.  No strings.  No questions.

Sam rolls his eyes—Dean’s sure of it—when he says, “Dean Winchester, the boy their mamas warned them about.”

**Dean Winchester, the boy your Mama made you.**

“It's like you've had this idea of what a Dean Winchester is beaten into your head so hard that you're concussed to who you really are, and I—"

_“Buh I lie girl things, an I lie Den, an we’re gonna be marry.”_

_Mama’s hands fly from her face and grab his arms tightly._ _“Don’t say that, Dean,” she hisses.  “Never again.  Never, ever say it again.”_

_Dean blinks at her, big green eyes full of confusion.  “Why?”_

_“Because it’s_ wrong, _Dean.  Boys don’t like boys, so_ _it isn’t a nice thing to say,” Mama tells him. her lip wobbling slightly.  “And if you don’t have anything nice to say_ _—_ _”  She pulls him into her, hugs him tightly, kisses his cheek, takes a deep, steadying breath.  “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then you shouldn’t say anything at all.”_

“Shut up, Sam.”  Dean doesn’t even recognize his own voice.  He can barely hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears, the hum of the Beast, the throb of the Mark.  His veins burn, his lungs burns, his heart burns; everything’s fire and there’s not enough smoke to choke on.

“Shit,” Sam says, words carried on an exhale.  Dean feels Sam crossing the room just as surely as he feels the blood in his mouth where he’s gnawed at the inside of his cheek.  “Shit, Dean,” he repeats, lightly placing his hand on Dean’s arm, not realizing he’s touching the Mark, “did Dad—”

**He did, he did, he did—but so did she.**

Dean snarls as he shakes Sam off of his arm, puts a hand on his chest, and shoves him back across the kitchen and against the sink.  He picks up the overturned mug in his hand, tosses it up and down, testing it’s weight.

“Dean?” Sam asks again.  “Did Dad hurt you?”

“It ain’t always Dad’s fault, Sammy.”

_**Yesss.** _

Sam’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open.  “Dean,” he says cautiously, “you need to put down the cup.  Listen to me, okay?  Just me.”

**He hurt you, too, didn’t he?  All those questions, making you think, making you remember.  He hurt you.**

“You just had to keep poking around, Sam, didn’t you?”

**You should hurt him back.**

“Y’know, if you don’t have anything nice to say,” Dean replies, his voice low, vicious, rough, “Sammy, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Dean?” Sam asks, nearly a whisper.

“Mama shoulda taught you better.”

The Mark laughs.

The music swells.

The cup flies.

Sam throws his arms over his face, but the cup smashes into pieces in the corner of the counter.  He looks up.

Dean stares at the shards of ceramic on the counter top, turns around, and walks away.

 **“Ow,”** says the voice in Sam’s brain.   **“ _Ow,_ Cee.  You hurt my feelings.”**

**“-’- -----.”**

**“Not as sorry as Sam.  Or Dean.  Or Castiel.  Eventually.  When he shows up.”**

**“------ -- ----.”**

**“Oh good.”**

But Sam doesn’t much care about the voices in his head right now.

What Sam cares about is the voice he heard in Dean’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks a big milestone—I now have over 100k words on AO3! We've come a long way in ten months, kids. Thanks for being here to support the journey. <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back, baby.

Dean hasn’t been out of his room in three days, but to Sam, it feels more like five months. He —

**Oh come on,** says the voice,  **you can’t be serious. You make people wait this long and just brush it off as Sam having a damn feeling?**

\-- --- -----’- ----- ---- ----, -- ---.

**To be fair, your Sam has gone through character development. But that isn’t the point, Cee.**

\----, --- ---- - ------ ----?

**Go back in time and not take an unannounced hiatus? Listen** , the voice continues,  **can we sidebar this? I think Sam’s migraine is rubbing off on me.**

And there’s that. The voices. With those bouncing around in his brain at odd and unpredictable hours of the day, those days that feel like months feel like years. He can’t think; he can’t sleep, at least not restfully; he can barely read, but that’s actually been something of a blessing, because it means his dick’s getting a break.

Because then, even worse, there’s  _ that. _ The elephant in his own room, otherwise known as the smut he can’t put down, starring the other two-thirds of Team Free Will. He made it through _[Standing There](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2041197/chapters/4432224)_ , though the going was slow (and may have reread chapter six several times, and chapter seven...a number he won’t own up to, especially not to himself) before turning back to the previous fics, looking for clues. If the problem originates with the fanfiction, as Marie said, then maybe the answers can be found there, too.

He certainly hopes they are, at least. Dean’s hiding more than the voice in his own head, and has been for some time if their last conversation was any indication.

Sam has wondered several times over the past three days why he had never bothered to ask Dean about his childhood before the fire. He knows he had to have asked about their mother, but he can’t remember anything. Sam has carried Dean-related guilt like an albatross for over a decade, but this was a whole third wing he’d never accounted for.

Sighing, he leaves his room and heads down the hall to the showers. Sam takes a glance at Dean’s door as he walks by and, sure enough, the breakfast tray from last night remains untouched. Granted, the pancakes were seasoned with charcoal — there’s a reason why he’s more than happy to let Dean rule the kitchen — but the coffee has turned to sludge, and the water boasts dust. Just like every other tray he’s left, the song remains the same; Dean’s not eating.

Dean isn’t talking, either, but Sam knows he’s still in his room, can hear him pacing back and forth, even heard him throwing shit a few times. Otherwise, the silence is deafening.

Well, his entire life as far back as Sam can recall. There’s no other person alive who knows Dean as well as Sam does, and now Sam suspects that he really doesn’t know his brother that well, either.

Sam stops.

There is someone. They just never can seem to remember him.

**Fucking** **_finally!_ **

**\------- --- ------ - -------.**

**Yes, but that called for celebration.**

**\----, --- —**

“Will you assholes please shut up?”

The disgruntlement in Sam’s brain is palpable.

**\---’- ----.**

**You essentially just called me an asshole and told me to shut up!**

**\--, --- ---.**

**It’s your dialogue! And stop giving me exclamation points!**

**-’- ----**  —

**So help me, if you quote Robert Singer one more time** **—**

“Seriously,” Sam interrupted, “how do I turn you two off?”

**Well you could keep talking, that always seems to do the trick.**

**\--- ------.**

**He can be objectified quietly.**

“Could I maybe _not_ be — ” Sam bites his tongue, because this is it. This is what going mad feels like. At least when he was hallucinating he had the benefit of being able to blame literal, actual Satan. Now, there’s no one to pin this on.

**\----, ---------- --.**

**Shush, you.**

Sam sighs. “Could either Talky or Thinky remind me what the hell I was about to do?”

**Oh. Oh I see what you did there,** says the voice with approval. **Is that a hint?**

**\-----.**

**Anyway, you were about to call Cas. Which you never do unless you need something. Which you should add to your list of things to feel bad about.**

“Sure,” says Sam as he turns around and trudges back to his bedroom. “Why not?”

 

* * *

 

Coffee remains one of the better inventions of the human race. It’s bitter and strong; weak and watery; neutral and coaxed into sweetness; flavored, fermented, and fancified. Coffee can be appreciated as being an accurate representation of its Creator, an art in and of itself.

But there are greater creations — or, rather, results of creations. For instance, the feeling of comfort provided by a cotton t-shirt fresh from the dryer. The way it smells clean — no, not clean. “Clean” doesn’t have a smell, which is why it is called “clean”. It is the absence of odor.

Well, unless one uses dryer sheets, but that complicates the whole analogy, and Castiel certainly does not miss the complications humans invent to impose upon themselves.

Likewise, Castiel detests the complications forced upon angelkind. He supposes that he could have negated some of these issues himself, starting with distancing himself from the Righteous Man and the Boy Who Could Be King, but it’s far too late to reconsider now. Not that he would want to; he’s grown fond of the Winchesters despite (or perhaps because of) their influence on him.

Things were simpler once. Like nudity and coffee beans. Perhaps Hannah was right; perhaps their time here on Earth should be declared finished and  _ good _ . They’ve inarguably been here much longer than seven of anything.

His vessel didn’t come with a return slip like hers. Caroline Johnson had a life to go back to; Jimmy Novak is not only dead, but his former life is no more. His wife is gone, likely unrecoverable. His child is gone, too, perhaps to be found. Not here, not at this counter or in this Biggerson’s, but certainly somewhere.

And so, Castiel looks for Claire Novak.

First, however, he looked for coffee and new clothes.

If his phone’s ringtone is to be believed, Sam Winchester is, in turn, looking for him.

“Hello, Sam,” Castiel greets him after fumbling around in his pockets for “[Requiem Aeternum](https://youtu.be/BVnpVqokp5I)”. “How is Dean?”

Sam huffs a laugh. “That’s actually why I’m calling you.”

His borrowed Grace doesn’t respond to the news, and Castiel almost misses the bubbling he used to feel upon confirmation of Dean in distress. (It isn’t that he particularly  _ likes _ Dean being in trouble, simply that he was, at one point, very accustomed to it.)

“What’s wrong, Sam?”

Castiel listens as he rattles off their most recent chain of events, which seem to involve an inordinate amount of breakfast food, lounging around, and, “Fanfiction?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam begins, “I guess you don’t understand that — ”

“‘ Fan fiction or fanfiction, also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, or fic, is fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction, created by  [ fans ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_\(person\)) of that work rather than by its creator. It is a popular form of fan labor, particularly since the advent of the Internet.’”

“Did you just quote Wikipedia?” asks Sam.

“It seemed the most expedient answer,” Castiel replies.

“I suppose. Well, anyway,” Sam continues, “Maeve and Marie — ”

“Who?”

“Crap, has it really been that long since we talked to you?”

“I honestly try not to keep track of the time between our conversations, Sam.” Castiel pauses before adding, “It leaves me with a hollow sadness.”

Sam swallows audibly. “I’m sorry, Cas. We’re not...Dean and I aren’t exactly the best at keeping friends.”

“It’s alright, Sam.”

“No. No, it’s really, really not. I mean,” starts Sam, sighing again, “it comes along with being a hunter. You get so busy keeping tabs on the bad guys you just forget to keep tabs on what matters.”

“I understand,” Castiel says. “You need me. I’m useful.”

“That’s...not at all what I meant. Do you seriously feel that way?”

Castiel tamps down the very human hurt that threatens to choke him.  _ Yes, _ he wants to say,  _ of course I feel that way. I always come when you call, and you rarely bother to call. _ But instead he says, “You said Dean was doing poorly.”

There’s a long moment of silence on the other end of the phone. “I need information on Dean’s childhood,” Sam finally tells him.

“Why would I be privy to such knowledge?”

“You remade him after Hell, right?”

“Of course,” and now he nearly regrets the lost of his Grace’s sorrow song.

“Then you should know everything about him. All his thoughts, his feelings, his experiences.”

“I — ” Castiel hesitates.

“What?”

Because he  _ should _ know. It would make sense, having cradled his soul, like he had Sam’s. Or perhaps not, since he brought Sam back less than whole. (Castiel shudders, remembering his brief but ugly conversation with his brothers when he sprung Sam from the Cage.) But Dean came back neatly in one piece, and Castiel…

Castiel…

“I don’t remember,” he says in confused, bewildered awe.

“What part?”

“Any of it.” Castiel’s voice trembles, like his hand on his cup of coffee. “I don’t remember remaking him. Not his bones or his blood or his flesh. Not the brand. There’s...nothing.”

“Do you think Naomi took it from you during reprogramming? Or maybe Zachariah when you — ”

“ — got pulled back to Heaven,” Castiel mercifully finishes for him. None of them have ever talked about it, and now certainly isn’t the time. “Perhaps. I don’t think it was Naomi, though.”

“Why’s that?”

Castiel’s chest is tight. It’s getting difficult to breathe. His vision begins to blur and water. “Sam, I’m afraid I must call you back in a few minutes. I...I require time to process this.”

“Yeah,” Sam says immediately, “that’s fine, Cas. I’ll figure out things on this end and we can catch up later, alright? Don’t worry. I’ll keep you posted.”

Castiel nods before recalling that Sam cannot see it. “Yes. Please do that. And Sam?” He exhales shakily. “Be careful.”

“Don’t have to tell me that, I promise. I’m uncomfortably aware.”

The phone beeps once as the call ends, but Castiel doesn’t remove it from his ear.

There was a time when Castiel could feel Dean without even having to blink, feel the effervescent remnants of Dean’s soul swirling in his Grace. It had taken him a long time to pinpoint what that odd feeling was; for a while, he only found it unsettling, unused to any sort of diffusion in the strict pattern of his making. The closer he and Dean grew, however, the more accustomed he became. Castiel felt warmer when they were together. He soon understood that Dean’s soul was complementary.

But he doesn’t remember how that came to be.

After the Leviathan, the tether between them felt weaker. Castiel couldn’t see Dean as more than a supplicant when he borrowed the mantle of God. It damaged the bond between them; it was less profound, as he had told Sam it was once. But he still felt the echoes of longing in Purgatory, still ached as Dean ached, mourned as he mourned, heard the call of the beast as Dean sought him out.

Castiel knows Naomi hadn’t tampered with it, else he wouldn’t have continued to feel the pull. When Metatron stole his Grace from him, though...

He doesn’t remember ever being so cold in all his existence.

But he also doesn’t remember giving the warmth and breath of life to the Righteous Man’s form.

Now, Castiel has to close his eyes and concentrate as much as he can to feel the faintest strain of Dean. There’s so much silence within him now, but at least this small amount of borrowed Grace allows him that.

But Castiel doesn’t remember why Dean’s soul filled the empty spaces in between his vessel and his true form.

He doesn’t remember.

_ He doesn’t remember. _

“Y’okay, hon?”

Castiel looks up and into the kind face of his server. She pulls his hand away from his ear, takes his phone and sets it on the counter, and then holds his hand in hers. A small human comfort.

If only he were. They were confusing, his brief experiences with humanity and painful, but simpler still. Easier to process his ever-growing maelstrom of developing emotion, regardless of the presence of his Grace.

“I’m not sure,” he admits. He takes a quick glance at her nametag — humans like that, to be called by name. “You are good to ask me, though, Kelly.”

She squeezes his hand. “We all have those days. The ones where tomorrow needs to hurry the hell up.”

“I don’t think tomorrow will be much of an improvement, unfortunately.”

Kelly shakes her head sadly, bouncing her red curls. “We have those  _ lives, _ too, hon. But you know what helps?”

“What’s that?”

“Pie a la mode. ‘specially when it’s on the house.”

Castiel squints. “I don’t see where relocating the consumption of the pie and ice cream would make a difference.”

“You’re a cute one,” Kelly says, laughing up to her eyes. She’s honest, Castiel thinks. Pure. She deserves the world. “Here, what’s your name?”

Castiel thinks about it. He has quite a few of them, but ultimately chooses, “Clarence.”

“I like that. ‘minds me of my boarder.”

“Oh?” he asks.

“Sure does,” says Kelly over her shoulder. “Name’s Claire.”

“Claire.”

“Been with me a few months now. Feisty thing. Works up at the Gas ‘n Sip. Say, you want this heated up?”

He stares at her before nodding again and watching her put it in the microwave. Castiel pushes all thoughts of Dean and Sam and hell and rebirth to the side. They aren’t important now.

Castiel has redemption to seek.

 

* * *

 

The Five gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“What news is there, Rosencrantz?” asks the Progenitor, tapping her nails impatiently against her cheek.

“Still no signs of either Marcie or Peppermint,” he replies. “It’s like they just vanished into thin air.”

“Or maybe they were never there to begin with,” Guildenstern says, illuminating his face with his flashlight as if telling a ghost story around a campfire.

“You kind of are, actually.” The Sage scrunches up her face, barely lit by her candle. “That’s your stage direction.”

“Considering Marcie and Peppermint are missing,” snaps the Progenitor, “I hardly think we’re going by the book anymore.” She shuts it forcefully and tosses it to the side.

“According to the book, we’re still on target,” says the Sage as she flips through the heavily-edited pages of her copy of the script.

“The Conductor just went through and reassigned Marie and Maeve’s lines!” Rosencrantz shouts. “It’s like they never existed!”

“Or maybe,” Guildenstern begins, leaning closer to the screen, “they were never there — ”

“No,” the Progenitor says tiredly, “you already said that line.”

“Ah,” he replies. “So I did. Sorry.”

“Everything’s happening so fast,” continues Rosencrantz. “I can’t keep up. The Knight’s glued in place, the Bishop’s all over the board, the Rook’s moving on his own — ”

“There’s no rhyme to it,” Guildenstern agrees. “Nothing is going according to plan.”

“--- -- --,” says the Conductor as they scribble furiously in their notebook, not even bothering to look up. “--- ---- -- ----. ---------- -- ----.”

“Yeah,” the Sage scoffs, “it’s going so well that we’re having this meeting at the wrong time.”

The Conductor stops writing, then ducks offscreen. Various papers and sticky notes go flying through view. A cat growls. There’s the squeak of a stuffed moose as it sails onto the keyboard.

“---------,” says the Conductor.

The Progenitor frowns. “I don’t understand. What do y

 

* * *

 

Sam is getting too used to showing up in new locations with no memory of getting there. He wishes this was the strangest of a lifetime of randomly-occurring phenomena, but he was the Devil once. There simply isn’t room for comparison after being worn by Satan.

He shudders. Thoughts of Lucifer are more than unwelcome.

Never mind his voice.

It was like hearing a mistake, a festering accident, Lucifer’s voice ringing unspoken through the kitchen. Sam is deadly sure he wasn’t meant to hear it, and even more certain he shouldn’t broach the subject with Dean, especially right now. Dean doesn’t seem willing to talk about anything, let alone the parasite that tagged along with the Mark.

Granted, the Mark is something of a parasite all on its own, but that doesn’t matter right now. They can deal with that later. If there’s anything Sam and Dean Winchester are good at, it’s putting things off until the last possible second and then fucking it up all at once.

**Gee, that wasn’t meta, at all.**

**\-----, ---.**

Sam doesn’t even want to  _ try _ and address the problem in his own head. That’s so far above his paygrade that he can’t even picture a check stub for it.

Instead, he wrote a note to Dean to let him know he was going out. Sam left it in front of Dean’s door on top of a stack of fanfic. He set a bag full of water bottles and energy bars beside it before getting in Baby, pulling out of the bunker, and setting off for Lawrence. He’s not getting anywhere on his own; Sam needs to research, and there’s only one possible and reliable source.

Now, Sam’s parked in front of an unassuming little blue house, with unassuming yellow mums in their unassuming, neat little beds, debating how much he wants to knock on the door. Every muscle in his body wants him to turn the car back on and hightail it back to Lebanon. This visit is so overdue as to be ridiculous.

In the end, his need to help Dean wins out. He opens the car door with a sigh and gets out, leaning back in and grabbing his messenger bag. By the time Sam stands back up, the house’s screen door is banging shut, and it’s occupant is standing on the porch.

“Sam Winchester,” she says, arms crossed, head cocked, eyes judging.

He tenses, then waves hello.

“You lose your manners?”

“No, I just — ”

“You feel guilty?”

Sam slings his bag onto his shoulder. “I mean, yes, of course — ”

“Well, good,” she says, “because you should.”

He sighs. “Hi, Ms. Moseley.”

Missouri Moseley shakes her head. “Sure took you long enough to get here.”

 

* * *

 

The Five gather in the night, hooded and huddled, around their screens.

“What news from the Wizard?” the Progenitor continues.

Guildenstern blinks. “I have the strangest sense of deja vu.”

“This does seem kind of familiar,” says Rosencrantz.

“We still haven’t heard anything from her,” the Sage tells them. “We continue to await her Comment.”

“Very well. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the duties of our lost comrades fall upon you.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” Rosencrantz inquires.

“If you would turn to page seventy-three,” says the Progenitor, opening her book again, “and read subsection T, article twelve, you will find that your tasks are fully outlined.”

“Shall we adjourn then?” asks the Sage. “I don’t think that’s an activity which necessitates a group.”

“I agree,” the Progenitor says.

“Then let us await the word of the Wizard,” the Five say in unison before three screens black out.

“Cee.”

“----?”

“Claire wasn’t in the outline,” the Sage says flatly. “Missouri Moseley wasn’t in the outline. Castiel didn’t have a subplot in the outline.”

The Conductor calmly holds up a ragged five-subject notebook that has clearly seen better days. They flick their Bic and light the corner of it, the fire showing a gleeful, slightly maniacal grin.

“Oh no. No, you have to have an outline. You can’t just throw it to the wind.”

“-’- ------ -- -- -- - --.”

The Sage groans. “This is what happened to DWIAGV, you  _ know _ this is what happened to DWIAGV. Why would you take five months to reoutline the plot and then literally set it on fire?”

The Conductor swears as the flame singes their hood.

“We need a script, or this is going to spiral completely out of control.”

“---- --- --, - ----- ------- - ------.”

_ “RENT _ references won’t save you when you lose, Cee,” the Sage reminds them.

“---’-- ----- -- -- -- --------,” says the Conductor. “---- -- --------- - ---- - ----- --.”

The Sage narrows her eyes. “Did you just quote  _ Attack of the Clones?” _

“-----.”

“There’s no way to talk you out of this, is there?”

The Conductor flicks their Bic and smiles.

 

* * *

 

Castiel pulls into the parking lot of the Gas ‘n Sip. He parks with extreme care, backing up twice to make sure he is between the lines perfectly.

Through the wide glass windows of the convenience store, Castiel watches a blonde girl mop the floor with a scowl, stopping occasionally to brush a braid out of her face and attempt to tuck it behind her ear.

She suddenly stops and turns to look directly at him.

That is Claire Novak. There’s no doubt whatsoever.

What is surprising is the whisper of his Grace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around. Let's do this again soon. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the tag ["ddd"](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/tagged/ddd) on my [tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com) for some of my research and inspiration for this fic. Beware of spoilers!
> 
> You can also find me on my [twitter](http://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan/), where I occasionally chirp witty things.
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3


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